Clean Steel
Clean Steel
From Blast Furnace To Breakthrough: A New Future For The World’s Favorite Metal
Every building, car, appliance, and wind turbine has one thing in common: steel. It’s the backbone of modern life. It’s strong, it’s versatile — and it’s a major driver of climate change. Steel production emits around a tenth of global emissions, making it one of the dirtiest industries on the planet. That’s because most steel still comes from coal-fired blast furnaces, part of an emissions-heavy process that hasn’t fundamentally changed in centuries. And with global demand set to rise, the challenge is only getting bigger. But steel’s high emissions also mean high leverage: cleaning it up could unlock one of the largest decarbonization wins of the century. From green hydrogen to electrified smelting to alternative reducing agents, innovators are racing to reinvent steel — and tap into a trillion-dollar opportunity to engineer a new net-zero world.
Emissions at stake in 2050: 3.3 Gigatons
Innovation Imperatives
Innovation Imperatives
Critical needs that can help accelerate the path to net zero
Decarbonized Steel Reducing Agents
Substitute alternative reducing agents in existing steelmaking processes
Replacing coal-based reducing agents in current steelmaking methods can enable emissions reductions without radical shifts to existing infrastructure. Promising options include hydrogen for direct reduced iron (DRI) processes, and biomass-derived alternatives to metallurgical coke in blast furnaces. Scaling these solutions can significantly lower the carbon intensity of steel production while leveraging much of today’s existing infrastructure, accelerating the transition to low-emission steel. To be impactful at scale, the cost of these reducing agents will need to compete with — and ideally beat — metallurgical coal and natural gas.
New Steelmaking Methods
Develop novel reduction and separation processes for low-grade iron ores
Decarbonizing steelmaking requires methods that can handle the world’s abundant low-grade iron ores without relying on coal or natural gas. Emerging approaches like efficient electrochemical reduction, molten-phase hydrogen reduction, and advanced ore beneficiation offer potentially scalable pathways to extract and refine iron with far lower emissions. One major barrier: the cost of clean energy needs to be low enough for this approach to be economically competitive.
Moonshots
Moonshots
High-risk, high-reward innovations that could radically reshape our path to net zero
Infinite Steel Recycling
Develop separations technology to manage impurities in secondary steel production
Steel is the world’s most recycled material — but limits still exist. The future potential of recycled steel is hampered by the buildup of impurities, particularly copper, which degrades quality and restricts the use of scrap in high-performance applications. A moonshot solution would develop advanced separation or purification technologies capable of removing these trace contaminants at scale, enabling endless recycling without loss of quality. If achieved, this would allow steel to circulate indefinitely in a closed loop, drastically reducing the need for virgin ore and slashing the emissions tied to primary steelmaking.
Tech Categories
Tech Categories
Groupings of climate technologies
| Cluster Name | Readiness | |
|---|---|---|
| Alternative Iron Reduction | Lab | |
Alternative iron reduction methods replace traditional coal-based techniques with methods other than hydrogen. Some of the leading contenders include plasma reduction, direct electrolysis of iron ore, and biomass-based reduction. | ||
| H2-Based Iron Reduction | Pilot | |
H2-based iron reduction replaces traditional coal-based methods for removing oxygen from iron ore. Fueled instead by hydrogen, this process produces iron without carbon emissions and releases only water vapor as a byproduct. | ||
| Scrap-Based EAF | Commercial | |
Scrap-based EAF is a method of making secondary steel by using electricity to melt recycled steel. |
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