Full Title: Dirty Steel, Dangerous Air: The Health Harms of Coal-Based Steelmaking
Author(s): Nadia Steinzor and John Cooney
Publisher(s): Industrious Labs
Publication Date: October 3, 2024
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
From centuries of use for tools and machinery to today’s buildings, appliances, cars, and ships, steel has long been prized for its strength, durability, and versatility. Steel also has a starring role to play in the transition to clean energy and transportation: it makes up 80% of wind turbines, is a key component of solar installations and electric vehicles, and can be continually recycled and re-formed to create new products. In the last 25 years, global production of steel has more than doubled. By 2050, global demand for steel could increase by more than a third compared to consumption in 2020.
There are several ways to make steel, but they all start with either mined iron ore or recycled steel scrap. New (or primary) steel production is based predominantly on mined iron ore, while recycled (or secondary) steel chiefly uses steel scrap as the input. The degree to which steel production harms the environment and health depends on the materials, energy, and equipment used in production and the effort that operators put into controlling pollution.
This report focuses on the impacts of making new steel predominantly from mined iron ore, the type of steelmaking that has the worst impacts on health, the environment, and climate. This is primarily due to the use of energy-intensive blast furnaces powered by metallurgical coke (“coke”), a refined, high-carbon form of processed coal used to make the iron that is then turned into steel. Blast furnaces are used in about 90% of ironmaking globally.