voestalpine AG (Linz, Austria):

Schwab P., Head of Research & Development, e-mail: stahl@voestalpine.com

For many years now the industry has tried — overall very successfully — to use its resources (pre-materials, raw materials and energy) as efficiently as possible, simply because they represent a very signifi cant cost factor. Preparing “waste” for recycling or feeding back into the production process not only avoids disposal costs and the need for disposal sites, it also helps optimize the overall cost of production. This approach also extends to greater flexibility in the materials used, for example, innovative, situation and productdriven ore mixtures, or pushing the use of natural gas rather than coal with HBI/DRI technology. Moreover, steel is a material that can be both recycled and “upcycled” – modern, high quality steels can be produced from any grade of scrap, even low grades. All the measures described above almost automatically involve a reduction in CO₂. However, if we are to talk seriously about the steel industry’s contribution to reducing CO₂ and take longterm decisions, then our task as an industry is to strengthen the understanding amongst opinion leaders and policymakers that there is no single, decisive measure we can take to make production practically emission-free overnight. Instead we must help them realize that this requires an incredibly large number of individual, precisely coordinated steps along the entire process chain. It is shown that conventional coalfired power stations currently achieve an efficiency level of around 30 %. This can be raised to almost 45 % using hightech materials, and the voestalpine Group is currently working on developments which will enable efficiency levels of up to 50 % and more to be reached.