Ukraine is in top five in terms of the carbon capacity of blast furnace production – JRC

Ukraine is among the top five in the world in terms of the carbon capacity of blast furnace production. Ukrainian manufacturers’ emissions at this stage amount to 0.46 t/t. These conclusions were reached by the GMK Center based on the analysis of data from the report Greenhouse Gas Intensities of the Steel Industry and its Trading Partners, prepared by the Joint Research Centre, the science and knowledge service of the European Commission. This report contains calculations of CO2 emissions for each of the production stages of steel production.

“Such results were obtained thanks to the active investments of steelmakers of Ukraine in blast furnace redistribution. Thus, during 2015-2021, 13 projects related to the modernization of blast furnace equipment were implemented in Ukraine in the amount of $450 million. All these projects were also aimed at improving environmental indicators,” says GMK Center chief analyst Andriy Tarasenko.

In general, the average indicator of direct CO2 emissions for the production of steel in an integrated way (coke pellets, sinter ore-iron-steel) is 1.95 tons. A number of countries have very close indicators of specific emissions – from 2.0 up to 2.2 t/t. These are the USA, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the UK, Serbia, Turkey, Brazil.

This group of countries includes Ukraine with average specific emissions of 2.3 t/t, as other countries have significantly higher indicators. Ukrainian steel producers are not inferior to other steel exporters in the EU in terms of emissions. They have advantages at the stages of iron and steel production, but there improvement reserve at the stages of production of raw materials – coke and sinter ore.