Recently, the reporter of “Economic Information Daily” learned that China’s steel industry carbon peak implementation plan and carbon neutral technology roadmap have basically taken shape. On the whole, the plan highlights source reduction, strict process control, and strengthened end-of-pipe governance, which directly refers to the synergy of pollution reduction and carbon reduction, and promotes a comprehensive green transformation of the economy and society.
Industry insiders said that promoting carbon peaking in the steel industry is one of the ten “carbon peaking” actions. For the steel industry, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. The steel industry needs to properly handle the relationship between development and emission reduction, overall and partial, short-term and medium-to-long-term.
In March this year, the China Iron and Steel Association revealed the initial goal of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality” in the steel industry. Before 2025, the iron and steel industry will achieve a peak in carbon emissions; by 2030, the iron and steel industry will reduce its carbon emissions by 30% from the peak, and it is expected that carbon emissions will be reduced by 420 million tons. The total emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter in the iron and steel industry rank among the top 3 in the industrial sector, and it is imperative for the iron and steel industry to reduce carbon emissions.
“It is the’bottom line’ and the’red line’ to strictly prohibit new production capacity. Consolidating the results of capacity reduction is still one of the key tasks of the industry in the future.” It is difficult to curb the rapid growth of domestic steel production, and we must “two-pronged”. Under the background that the total amount is difficult to drop significantly, ultra-low emission work is still an important starting point.
At present, more than 230 steel companies across the country have completed or are implementing ultra-low emission retrofits with approximately 650 million tons of crude steel production capacity. As of the end of October 2021, 26 steel companies in 6 provinces have publicized, of which 19 companies have publicized organized emissions, unorganized emissions, and clean transportation, and 7 companies have partially publicized. However, the number of publicly announced steel companies is less than 5% of the total number of steel companies in the country.
The above-mentioned person pointed out that at present, some steel companies have insufficient understanding of ultra-low emission transformation, and many companies are still waiting and watching, seriously lagging behind the schedule. In addition, some companies have insufficient understanding of the complexity of the transformation, adopting immature desulfurization and denitrification technologies, unorganized emissions, clean transportation, environmental management, online monitoring and regulation, etc. There are many problems. There are even acts of companies falsifying production records, making two books, and falsifying emission monitoring data.
“In the future, ultra-low emissions must be implemented throughout the entire process, the entire process, and the entire life cycle.” The person said that through taxation, differentiated environmental protection control, differentiated water prices, and electricity prices, the company will further increase the policy for completing ultra-low emission transformation. Support intensity.
In addition to the basic “dual energy consumption control”, it will focus on promoting green layout, energy saving and energy efficiency improvement, optimizing energy use and process structure, building a circular economy industrial chain, and applying breakthrough low-carbon technologies.
The above-mentioned people said that in order to achieve green, low-carbon and high-quality development in the steel industry, it also needs to optimize the industrial layout. Increase the output ratio of short-process electric furnace steelmaking, and solve the problem of high energy consumption and high emission of long-process steelmaking. Optimize the charge structure, optimize the industrial chain, and greatly reduce the number of independent sintering, independent hot rolling, and independent coking enterprises. Optimize the energy structure, implement clean energy replacement of coal-fired industrial furnaces, eliminate gas generators, and increase the proportion of green electricity. In terms of transportation structure, increase the proportion of clean transportation of materials and products outside the factory, implement railway transfers and water transfers for medium and long distances, and adopt pipe corridors or new energy vehicles for short and medium distances; fully implement the construction of belt, track, and roller transportation systems in the factory to the greatest extent Reduce the amount of vehicle transportation in the factory and cancel the secondary transportation of materials in the factory.
In addition, the current concentration of the steel industry is still low, and the next step should be to increase mergers and reorganizations and integrate and optimize resources. At the same time, strengthen the protection of resources such as iron ore.
The carbon reduction layout of leading companies has accelerated. As China’s largest steel company and currently ranked first in the world in annual output, Baowu of China has made it clear that it strives to achieve a carbon peak in 2023, has the ability to reduce carbon by 30% in 2030, and reduce its carbon emissions by 50% from the peak in 2042. , Achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
“In 2020, China’s Baowu’s crude steel output will reach 115 million tons, distributed in 17 steel bases. China’s Baowu’s long steel manufacturing process accounts for nearly 94% of the total. Carbon emission reduction poses a more severe challenge to China’s Baowu than its peers. “China Baowu Party Secretary and Chairman Chen Derong said that China Baowu takes the lead in achieving carbon neutrality.
“Last year we directly stopped Zhangang’s original blast furnace plan, and planned to accelerate the development of low-carbon metallurgical technology and implement the construction of hydrogen-based shaft furnace process for coke oven gas.” Chen Derong said, developing a hydrogen-based shaft furnace direct reduction ironmaking process, The steel smelting process is expected to achieve near-zero carbon emissions.
Hegang Group plans to achieve a carbon peak in 2022, reduce carbon emissions by more than 10% from the peak in 2025, reduce carbon emissions by more than 30% from the peak in 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. Ansteel Group plans to achieve a peak in total carbon emissions by 2025 and a breakthrough in the industrialization of cutting-edge low-carbon metallurgical technologies in 2030, and strive to reduce total carbon emissions by 30% from the peak in 2035; continue to develop low-carbon metallurgical technologies and become my country’s steel industry The first large-scale steel companies to achieve carbon neutrality.