Climate Change: technology key to decarbonisation of Chinese steel mills, BHP executive says

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Carbon capture and storage facilities among technologies that will be key to reducing the industry’s carbon footprint in China, says Vandita Pant, BHP’s chief commercial officer

Young age of blast furnaces in China means it would be prohibitively expensive for the industry to directly transform to low-carbon methods

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A workshop producing high-end automotive steel plates in Qianan, in China’s northern Hebei province. Photo: Xinhua

Eric Ng

Published: 12:00pm, 20 Feb 2022Updated: 12:58pm, 20 Feb 2022

China’s steel industry, which has some of the world’s youngest production facilities, will go through a multistage technology-driven decarbonisation journey, according to a senior executive at Australian mining giant BHP, which is helping the sector make this transition.

The installation of carbon capture and storage facilities will be among technologies that will be key to reducing the carbon footprint of the industry in China and India – the world’s two largest steel producers – in the medium term, said Vandita Pant, BHP’s chief commercial officer.

“Given the young fleet of plants in China and India, the first stage involves using better quality coal and iron ore and optimising processes,” she told the Post last week. “In the second stage, the adoption of transitional technology such as carbon capture and storage will be key, before low-carbon solutions such as green hydrogen and direct reduced iron production are introduced in the third stage.”

Iron ore and metallurgical coal miner BHP has since late 2020 formed separate partnerships with four key Asian customers that together account for around 12 per cent of global steel production. It has agreed to contribute a total of US$75 million towards joint projects with China’s Baowu Steel Group and HBIS Group, South Korea’s POSCO and Japan’s JFE Steel on low-carbon steelmaking.

Vandita Pant, chief commercial officer of Australian mining giant BHP. Photo: Handout

The young age of blast furnaces in the two countries – averaging 12 years in China and 18 years in India – means it would be prohibitively expensive for the industry to directly transform to low-carbon methods, Pant said.