Description
Steel, has a contradictory relationship to the climate catastrophe: it is both a key contributor to global warming, accounting for 7-9% of global carbon emissions, and a crucial material for decarbonisation, with steel constituting 80% of the components that make up wind turbines (Kim et al, 2022). Most attention has been paid to the technical difficulties of decarbonising this ‘hard to abate’ industry, such as the challenges of fitting steel mills with carbon capture technology or replacing basic oxygen and blast furnaces with hydrogen-based direct reduced iron and electric arc furnaces. There has been less focus on the International Political Economy of steel decarbonisation, particularly the question of how to muster an estimated $8-11 billion in extra annual investment in an industry wracked by cut-throat competition, overproduction, low capacity utilisation, and narrow profit margins (Mission Possible Partnership, 2022; OECD, 2023). This paper will situate the technical elements of the steel decarbonisation challenge within the historical dynamics of capital accumulation within the sector by tracing how current initiatives to green the production of steel – from China’s muscular industrial strategy to the EU’s blended finance projects – must navigate an industry that is mired in its latest cycle of overcapacity, crisis, and restructuring.
