We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.
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The key problem is that, as the article highlights, iron is widely available and its energetic cost per ton is relatively small. This means that we actually need to reduce steel production, not just replace it with something else and call it a day. Doing the later would cause more harm than good.
For that, I think that consistent application of the three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle - in this order, and stop forgetting the first two R’s dammit) would be a good start. And perhaps legislative measures against businesses trying to prevent you from applying the three R’s.
In the meantime, perhaps look for alternative steel productiion processes? You need some carbon as it’s part of the alloy, but I wonder if the bulk of the reduction could be done by electricity instead. And even the carbon could be sourced from renewable sources; more expensive, but doable.
The folks who came up with the 3 R’s (plastics industry) knew that only the first one made any difference whatsoever.
Even today, plastics recycling only makes a trivial difference. Edit: And a lot of things saying “uses X% recycled plastic” are often referring to the plastic recycled in-house through the manufacturing process, which they’ve always done (such as flash from injection molding). Unless it says “post-consumer” it’s just moral grandstanding.
However, steel is the most recycled material today, and glass is also good at being recycled. But glass has a weight (and therefore energy) penalty, which likely outweighs recycling benefits.
How else do u suppose we make steel?
what about giving up on steel and moving into something more ‘vintage’, like clay @_@
That’s fundamentally different from steel. We don’t really have an alternative currently. You could use something like aluminium but that’s not environmentally friendly either (in the initial production, for recycling it’s great).
In Europe, even a single family home is now built using tons of steel. They build with brick, but the foundation, corner pillars, beams on top of walls are all concrete.
A few decades ago, reinforced concrete beams were only used in large buildings and infrastructure.
Not to mention the huge amount of carbon emissions resulting from cement production, for the concrete that steel is fixed in
I hear bronze is pretty decent. Could always go retro.
Rio Tinto is moving to solar (and some wind) here in Australia for its aluminum refining and smelting operations. Would be good if the same could be done for steel too.
Aluminium has traditionally been smelted with electricity. It’s easy to move to green tech
Steel is harder. There is serious work that had been going on for years trying to come up with new low emissions ways of making steel
