This article is part of a series on steel distribution by the EUROMETAL Association of its 75thAnniversary Conference, July 2-3, discussing the challenges and opportunities of the industry from its policy; trade Protection; carbon border regulationmechanism; green steel; and the changing role of European steel distribution.
"Climate change dictates not only what happens in our industry, but in every industry," said Edwin Basson, CEO of the World Steel Association, on the 75th anniversary of the EUROMETAL events.
Indeed, green steel, and its place in the broader decarbonization of global industry was at the forefront of the discussions at the conference, especially in the European steel industry ending the transition period based on financial reporting for the purposes of its sustainability.
However, as the steel industry attempts to achieve ambitious sustainability goals, distributors continue to lack an official definition or agreed regulatory framework for green steel, limiting their potential to create and assess demand for hydrocarbon products and maintaining shareholder reluctance to trade green steel without support lined up in advance.
Transparency features
While many distributors prefer to wait for guidance in legislation to work out lead markets for "green" steel, as the industrial decarbonization accelerator act is scheduled for later this year as part of the European Steel and Other Metals action plan, some distributors have already successfully opened up new industrial transition opportunities, like Kleckner CEO, Guido Kerkhoff.
In one of the most interesting presentations, Kerkhoff demonstrated how Kleckner's approach to green steel marketing, focused on carbon footprint products (FUPS), could be embedded in distributors' purchasing information and data services, purely illustrating the importance of green steel to consumers.
By emphasizing the relative affordability of steel compared to other products, Kerkhoff showed that steel – in its ubiquity – relies on a number of concomitant reductions in embedded emissions to contain end products at minimal cost, attracting value, creating demand from distributors, and making transparent to consumers the benefits of switching to green steel over other decarbonization parties in their supply chains
"Of course, steel is an important part of the climate problem," Kerkhoff said, "but I think it's a much more important part of the solution."
Dr. Henrik Adam, president of Eurofer, stated the same thing in his presentation, stating that "steel itself
