With the Chinese government setting 2030 as the target for China's carbon emissions to peak and 2060 for it to achieve carbon neutrality, the country's steel sector will have to change the way it does business.
Fastmarkets speaks to market participants for their views on what these changes might be, and what challenges lie ahead.
1. Reduce hot metal production
Reducing hot metal output - such as via
restrictions imposed on steel mills' blast furnaces (BFs) in Tangshan - is the easiest approach to implement, market participants said.
"The production of hot metal is the phase of steelmaking that emits the most carbon, so local governments tend to cut BF production rates when implementing measures to lower emissions," an industry analyst said.
China's hot metal output rose by 5.4% in the first five months of 2021 to 380 million tonnes, which is a lower rate of increase compared with that for crude steel production (13.9%, 473 million tonnes), according to the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
"The lower growth rate of hot metal output is the result of restrictions on blast furnace production,"...