It is estimated that India's steel production capacity may increase to 300 million tons by 2030 (as proposed in the 2017 National Steel Policy of India) and potentially reach 500 million tons by 2050. The steel industry in India currently accounts for 5% of the country's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 34% of the combined emissions from the manufacturing and construction sectors. As steel production rises, so will the industry's GHG emissions. Under a "business-as-usual" scenario, emissions are projected to nearly triple, increasing from 295 million tons of CO2 in 2020 to 837 million tons of CO2 by 2050. Therefore, it is crucial to explore pathways for decarbonizing the Indian steel industry to ensure it meets its carbon emission targets on schedule.
As of now, clean technology solutions in the Indian steel industry have not yet achieved commercialization and are, at most, in the research and/or pilot stages.
1. Improving Energy Efficiency
Enhancing energy efficiency should be the primary focus for Indian steel companies. Compared to international benchmarks, the energy consumption in India's steel production process is significantly higher. This is largely due to the prevalence of outdated and inefficient blast furnaces, as well as a heavy reliance on coal-based direct reduction processes.
2. Enhancing Resource Utilization Efficiency
Improving resource utilization efficiency is another important lever to help reduce CO2 emissions in the steel production process. As the demand for steel in India grows, encouraging material recycling is crucial to mitigate adverse environmental impacts.
Measures to improve resource utilization efficiency include increasing the use of scrap steel in the steelmaking process, extending product lifespan by using higher-quality materials, and reducing steel consumption by using higher-grade steel products. These measures reduce the demand for crude steel production and have a positive impact on energy use and carbon emissions.
3. Transforming technologies
In the short term, measures to improve energy efficiency and resource utilization efficiency are crucial in helping to reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption in the steel production process.
From a medium- to long-term perspective, the steel industry will need to adopt new low-carbon technologies. This will require a shift from the current coal-based steel production to gas-based technologies, significantly reducing environmental impacts. From an economic standpoint, using natural gas or syngas will become a feasible transformation option.
In India, if the landed cost of natural gas is around $6-8 per MMBtu (Million British Thermal Units), then gas-based direct reduction could compete with coal-based reduction routes. Some direct reduced iron (DRI) plants in India that use natural gas as a reducing agent are already relying on imported natural gas. For instance, Jindal South West (JSW) Steel uses 100% imported natural gas for its DRI production. Other gases, such as coke oven gas (COG) and COREX gas, are also utilized in a few steel plants across India.
4. Deep Decarbonization Technologies
To achieve decarbonization in the steel production process, it is not enough to simply improve energy and resource efficiency; the focus must be on the commercial scale development of breakthrough technologies——carbon capture technology, for instance.
The removal of CO2 from steel mill gas can be integrated with CO2 capture to provide a high CO2-content, high-quality gas source for carbon capture, thereby achieving low-cost and low-energy CO2 capture. PKU Pioneer adopts a combined process of pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and cold box, keeping the total energy consumption for capturing one ton of CO2 below 2 GJ. When coupled with the CO separation technology for steel mill gas, the total cost is further reduced.
PKU Pioneer uses its self-developed Cu-loaded adsorbent to efficiently purify CO from feed gases rich in H₂, N₂, and CH₄, achieving a purity of up to 99.9%. The PSA CO separation technology addresses the industrial challenge of separating CO from N₂ and CH₄ and has been widely applied in CO separation and purification across various feed gases. Among over 50 successful engineering cases, PKU Pioneer’s PSA-CO unit pilot project for China Steel Corporation (CSC) is now under operation. Having met the stringent requirements of developed countries, PKU Pioneer exported the first PSA-CO purification plant to the United States in 2024. PSA CO purification technology plays a vital role in the ongoing development of decarbonization pathways in steel production. For example, in gas-based direct reduced iron (DRI) processes, the separated high-purity CO can be used as a reducing agent or chemical feedstock, significantly reducing reliance on traditional coal and lowering carbon emissions. Additionally, it can be integrated with hydrogen utilization to provide more possibilities for deep decarbonization in the steel industry.
