At the recent 74th Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Steel Committee meeting held in Paris, Laplace Conseil, a consulting firm specialized in the metal and mineral industries, gave a presentation on the impacts of energy market developments on the steel industry.
According to Laplace Conseil, while steel is energy intensive, it is also a major supplier to the energy industry. Steel demand from the energy sector is estimated to account for 12 percent of total steel output. Wind and solar are the most steel intensive technologies for power generation. On the other hand, the steel industry consumed about five percent of all primary energy produced in 2012.
Laplace Conseil pointed out that in the steel industry blast furnaces account for 82 percent of energy consumption and 88 percent of CO2 emissions, while electric arc furnaces (EAF) make up four percent of energy consumption and eight percent of CO2 emissions.
Replacing blast furnaces by electric arc furnace production is one of the measures to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Laplace Conseil indicated that, thanks to its higher share of electric arc furnaces, the NAFTA region has the lowest energy consumption and CO2 emissions. For many decades, the share of EAF-based steel output has grown steadily in Europe and NAFTA, with NAFTA at 60 percent and Europe at 50 percent in 2011.
