Govt support will spur industry to shift to low-carbon steel: Sajjan Jindal

The JSW group CMD says steel industry has a crucial role to play in India's pledge to Net-Zero by 2070

The capital cost of setting up new steel plants and shuttering old ones will be a major barrier in the change to low-carbon steelmaking even as prices of renewable electricity and green hydrogen are falling fast, said JSW group chairman and managing director, Sajjan Jindal.

Jindal, however, noted that the steel industry has a crucial role to play in India’s pledge to Net-Zero by 2070.

Addressing the Minerals, Mining and Metals e-Conclave’ organized by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCC&I), he said, the steel industry accounts for 0.7 per cent of the world’s economic output, the industry also contributes 7 per cent towards global emissions.

“This needs to change and needs to change fast,” Jindal said.

But for the transition, Jindal also called for initiatives at the “policy level”. “Curtailing carbon emissions will require major upgrades at the steel mills and the initiative will have to be taken at the industry as well as policy level,” he said.

Jindal said that with the deployment of best available technologies, low-carbon steelmaking would become competitive with respect to conventional methods.

“While the transition period may involve high initial capital costs, as well as Opex costs, proactive government support through well-designed policy will ensure that the industry is not discouraged from making this transition,” he said.

“Viable green steel production could be more than a decade away even though several of the world's major steelmakers including us at JSW are actively developing plans to adopt the process to meet carbon-neutral goals. In this context, switching to clean hydrogen seems to be the most likely immediate solution to get to net zero,” he further said.

JSW Steel, it may be mentioned, has set a target of reducing its specific CO2 emissions by 42 per cent by FY2030 (vs base year FY 2005), aligning its target with the Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Major steel producers including JSW Steel have announced expansion plans.

JSW Steel, Jindal said, was adding capacity at an “unprecedented rate”. “Our planned expansion over the next 4 years is equivalent to the capacities we achieved in the past two decades,” he said.

However, he said that all growth would be complemented by conscious efforts towards sustainable manufacturing in a more cost effective, less resource intensive manner. “We are also working towards increasing our dependence on renewable energy for all our requirements,” he said.