Accelerating Green Steel Workshop highlights infrastructure needs

Decarbonizing heavy industries such as iron and steel requires sustained effort and ingenuity. Hosted by the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and the Center for Iron and Steelmaking Research (CISR), the Accelerating Green Steel Workshop gathers representatives across the global iron and steel supply chain in person in Pittsburgh to assess progress and challenges towards the industry’s decarbonization goals. 

Now in its third year, there have been enough annual sessions to portray how decarbonization efforts in the iron and steel industry have ebbed and flowed in the years since the conference began in 2023. A Proceedings report, which is produced by Carnegie Mellon University and does not necessarily reflect the views of any particular company, summarizes the discussion and the results of the workshop’s annual survey, which describes producers’ efforts, ambitions, and bottlenecks in the transition. 

Valerie Karplus, conference co-chair and associate director of the Scott Institute, emphasizes the importance of the conference’s multidisciplinary analysis. Karplus and fellow co-chair Chris Pistorius, CISR’s co-director, led sessions that focused on companies’ progress updates, breakthroughs, technology costs, and public policy for decarbonization. 

“It was exciting to see how much momentum to decarbonize persists, despite recent headwinds,” said Karplus. “The question was not if, but when and how – including how to source sufficient clean electricity for operations and how to improve the economics of hydrogen direct reduced iron and carbon capture.” 

In one notable shift from previous years, conference attendees expressed a decreased level of concern about technical solutions, suggesting a growing confidence in the technical feasibility. Workforce or community resistance to decarbonization showed a trend toward decreased concern, from already low levels in 2023. Decarbonization carries potentially large local environmental and health benefits, although the workforce impacts may be mixed.

When evaluating changes in the industry’s decarbonization progress over the past year, attendees reported mixed experiences, pointing mainly to policy reversals or slowing ambition affecting expectations of progress. However, over half of participants saw no change from prior years, and there was a common interest in creating decarbonization strategies that are insulated from policy shifts and can support uninterrupted progress, and a shared view that demonstrating decarbonization technologies is a crucial step toward bringing them to scale.  

We see evidence that the workshop is beginning to play an instrumental role in expanding the field of vision and realm of the possible for participating organizations.

Valerie Karplus, Associate Director, Scott Institute for Energy Innovation

Hydrogen-based direct reduced iron (DRI) was discussed as a promising iron production option. Even though this process is expected to behave similarly to that of natural gas-based DRI, uncertainties remain with identifying the optimal operating conditions—like hydrogen flow rate, gas temperature, and humidity—and determining the best way to produce the needed hydrogen without creating a surge in electricity demand. 

“It was very helpful to share our research on known unknowns when it comes to hydrogen DRI as a future ironmaking pathway,” Pistorius said. “Innovators in industry shared valuable perspectives on strategies for overcoming some of the challenges, real or perceived, to realize the potential of this deeply decarbonized process.”

As part of the workshop, postdoctoral associate Elina Hoffmann led a session introducing the Decarbonizing Steelmaking TechnoEconomic EvaLuation (decarbSTEEL) tool, developed largely by CMU PhD students. Industry members brainstormed a range of opportunities for their organizations and other stakeholders to use the tool, including as a way to screen  for promising decarbonization options and assess the likely impact of policies.

“We see evidence that the workshop is beginning to play an instrumental role in expanding the field of vision and realm of the possible for participating organizations,” Karplus said. “This is incredibly exciting, especially in a moment where we need to look across the valley and stay focused on advancing towards technically-sound, economically-viable decarbonization solutions.”