China’s steel mills are shifting to greener production processes which don’t favour Australian iron ore. Australian miners must quickly adapt or get left behind.
Port Talbot steelworks employs about 4,000 people and most of their jobs are at risk.
Ben Birchall / PA Images / Alamy
Sally Innis, University of British Columbia; Benjamin Cox, University of British Columbia; John Steen, University of British Columbia e Nadja Kunz, University of British Columbia
Simple economic modelling shows the mining industry would benefit from a carbon tax.
Australia’s abundant wind and solar resources mean we’re well placed to produce the hydrogen a green steel industry needs. But there are technical and economic challenges ahead.
Electric vehicles and renewable energy will only get the country so far.
AP Photos/Evan Vucci
To cut enough greenhouse gas emissions, the world will need technologies that are still being developed, particularly for industries that are tough to clean up, like cement, steel and shipping.
Steelworks at Middlesbrough, UK.
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Building renewable energy infrastructure involves mining for materials such as lithium, graphite and cobalt. If not done responsibly, that could cause huge environmental damage.
Just as thermal coal can be replaced with clean energy from renewables, we can use low-emissions steel manufacturing to phase out metallurgical coal.
A crane carrying with melting steel at the blast furnace Schwelgern 2 at ThyssenKrupp steel mill in Duisburg , Germany (December 12, 2014).
Patrik Stollarz/AFP
Europe recycles 70% of its steel, but much is exported, turning what should be a circular process into a linear one. Instead, materials need to be circularity-ready the moment they’re manufactured.
The Trump administration says its trade policy saved the U.S. steel industry.
AP Photo/Jim Mone
China, which once processed much of the world’s scrap, has slashed imports of “foreign garbage.” What can the US do to step up recycling at home?
It’s a long way from most places, but it is about to host a bigger battery than the world’s biggest, molten salt solar and pumped hydro generation, and a much bigger steelworks.
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Far from being wiped off the map as was once predicted, Whyalla is coming back in an unlikely way, as potentially Australia’s biggest steel producer powered almost entirely by renewable energy.