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The European steel industry decides to strengthen its R&D programme aimed at reducing CO2 emissions
Feb 28, 2008
At a meeting of the Steering Committee of the European Steel Technology Platform (ESTEP) in Brussels, the European steel industry and its policy-making partners decided to forge ahead with the ULCOS programme and take it to its second phase. ULCOS is the world’s most ambitious R&D programme aimed at reducing the process-related CO
2 emissions in steelmaking. The next phase will cost several hundred million euros.
All stakeholders of the ESTEP attended or were represented at the meeting, including the EU Commission and Member States representatives. During the meeting, in view of a common determination to take the ULCOS (Ultra Low CO
2 Steelmaking) research project to the next level, the decision was taken to commence the second phase of the programme.
The European steel industry’s technology platform called upon the European Union and national governments to provide for the necessary financial incentives to encourage its members to further engage in substantial investments. Such investments are risky, but are indispensable to consolidate Europe’s technological lead in steelmaking.
EU backing
ULCOS is backed by the European Commission and carried out by an industrial consortium composed of steelmakers, companies of the steel supply chain, research laboratories and universities.
"This important decision shows that the European steel industry is strongly committed to bring its contribution to the fight against climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, it demonstrates that it is capable of living up to this responsibility and at the same time of seeking to improve its competitiveness", said Michel Wurth, chairman of ESTEP’s Steering Committee.
ULCOS-II’s objective: cut emissions by a factor two in the long term
The European steel industry has cut emissions by 50% over the last 40 years. As carbon-based technologies have approached their physical limits with respect to energy efficiency, the steel industry decided in 2002 to invest in long term R&D to come up with breakthrough technologies to decrease even more drastically the CO
2 emissions in steelmaking. This was the first reason to launch ESTEP at the beginning of 2003 with the support of the European Commission. ULCOS, which is being carried out by a consortium of 48 European partners, is the most important collaborative project implemented under the umbrella of the FP6 and the Research Fund of Coal and Steel (RFCS).
A two-phase strategy has been put into place to achieve the challenging objectives of ULCOS: a first one consisting in the validation of process concepts, and a second one demonstrating at pilot-scale the feasibility of the most promising amongst them. The first phase has already been successfully completed, with the selection of four breakthrough routes for further work as a selection of 80 potential steelmaking routes. These technologies have the potential of cutting emissions by a factor two or more in the long term. During the second phase, which started with a study looking ahead until 2050 and is currently underway, the four selected process candidates are being tested at a significant but not yet industrial scale.They each need to be further evaluated in detail with regards to their technological, process, economical and environmental performance.
I
ndustrial scale pilots
Going forward, a so-called ULCOS-II programme has been proposed, in which several larger scale pilots will have to be erected to test, at an industrial scale, the most promising of these medium/long term technologies. Except when carbon-lean electricity is massively available, all breakthrough routes need to be coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS), a concept which will have to be adapted cleverly to the peculiar features of the sector.
The first technology to be evaluated at industrial scale will be based on the Blast Furnace technology with Top Gas Recycling (TGR-BF) and CCS. Large investments will be necessary, with a price tag of around 300 MEUR for a first implementation of the TGR-BF route.
It was decided that the ULCOS management committee should prepare both financial and technical files to launch ULCOS-II in the near future.
Furthermore, the Steering Committee also gave its strong support to several other large environmental projects such as: scale-free and lean-energy processes, sustainable use of resources, societal impact of development of new materials, intelligent manufacturing and energy-efficient building in strong collaboration with the European Construction Technological Platform (ECTP) platform.
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The European steel industry decides to strengthen its R&D programme aimed at reducing CO2 emissions
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