European Steel Industry Reaffirms Commitment to Reducing CO2 Emissions

February 29, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

The current ULCOS project brings together steelmakers, companies in the steel supply chain, research laboratories and universities, working to devise breakthrough technologies that can bring about enhanced reductions in CO2 emissions from steelmaking.

ULCOS has almost €30 million in funding already allocated from the research programmes of the European Union (EU), including the Coal and Steel Research Fund (IP/07/1041) managed by the European Commission (EC).

ULCOS-II will require significant levels of investment; the first industrial-scale demonstration is estimated at €300 million.

"This important decision shows that the European steel industry is strongly committed to making its contribution to the fight against climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, it demonstrates that it is capable of living up to this responsibility and at the same time seeking to improve its competitiveness," said Michel Wurth, chairman of ESTEP's steering committee.

Janez Potočnik, EC commissioner for science and research, said, "The European Commission is committed to encouraging industry to reduce its CO2 emissions, and research plays a vital role in that. The European Steel Technology Platform and the work of the ULCOS programme are good examples of an industry working to develop appropriate technologies to maintain its future competitiveness."

The European steel industry has cut emissions by 50% over the last 40 years. As carbon-based technologies approach their physical limits with respect to energy efficiency, the steel industry has decided to invest in long-term R&D to come up with breakthrough technologies to decrease CO2 emissions in steelmaking even more drastically.

It was for this reason that the European Steel Technology Platform was launched, with the support of the EC, at the beginning of 2003. ULCOS, carried out by a consortium of 48 European partners, is the most important collaborative project implemented under the umbrella of the EU's Sixth Framework programme and the Research Fund of Coal and Steel.

To achieve its challenging objectives, ULCOS first validates process concepts and then demonstrates, on a pilot project scale, the feasibility of the most promising concepts. From a list of 80, four breakthrough "routes," with the potential to cut emissions by a factor of two or more in the long term, have been selected for further research.

These four process candidates will be tested following a study that looks ahead to 2050. They each need to be further evaluated in detail with regard to their technological, process, economical and environmental performance.

The ULCOS-II programme, which was given the go-ahead on Feb. 27 by ESTEP, will set up several larger-scale pilot projects to test the most promising medium-term and long-term technologies on an industrial scale.

Except when carbon-lean electricity is massively available, all breakthrough routes will need to be coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS), a concept that will have to be adapted cleverly to the particular features of the sector.

The first technology to be evaluated on an industrial scale will be based on the blast furnace technology with top gas recycling (TGR-BF) and CCS. This research will require considerable investment, with a price tag of about €300 million for the implementation of the TGR-BF route. The outcome of this research will be technology for carbon capture, transport and storage in steelmaking, thus allowing CO2-free steelmaking for the first time.

This technology will be developed in line with EU objectives on carbon capture and storage and its public acceptance. ESTEP will work closely with the European Zero Emissions Technology Platform, which is also focusing on research into CO2 capture, transport and storage.

At its meeting on Feb. 27, ESTEP's steering committee also gave strong support to several other large environmental projects, such as scale-free and lean-energy processes, sustainable use of resources, societal impact of development of new materials, intelligent manufacturing and energy-efficient buildings, working in tandem with the European Construction Technological Platform platform.

For more information, see the ESTEP web site.

Source: European Commission.