American Iron and Steel Institute

The U.S. steel industry has reduced its energy intensity per ton of steel shipped by 31% since 1990. Since 2002, energy intensity is down 15%. Because of the close relationship between energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, the industry’s aggregate CO2 emissions per ton of steel shipped were reduced by a comparable amount during the same period.

According to EPA’s national greenhouse gas emissions report for 2004, Iron and Steel represented 16.3% of the industrial process emissions yet were only 0.7% of the total U.S. emissions.

The steel industry is working to develop new, advanced steel products and applications that will yield even greater energy benefits. For example, the UltraLight Steel Auto Body-Advanced Vehicle Concepts (ULSAB-AVC), received the Stars for Energy Efficiency award from the Alliance to Save Energy for its significant advances in solutions for vehicle energy efficiency through new lightweight Advanced High- Strength Steel (AHSS) applications.

The steel industry has established a Climate VISION commitment to improve its energy efficiency by 10% by 2012, with 2002 as a basis. The industry has already achieved that reduction in just four years! If every individual and segment of the U.S. economy had achieved the same energy improvements as the steel industry, the U.S. would exceed Kyoto accords.

A large portion of the energy consumption is represented by coal. However, as steelmakers continue to use steel scrap to make new steel, they are conserving natural resources and reducing this energy consumption. By using steel scrap, rather than natural resources, steelmakers reduce annual energy consumption by an amount that would power 20 million households for one year.

The steel industry continues to search for new ways of improving the energy efficiency for its operations. In 2003, AISI joined Climate VISION, a voluntary program administered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to reduce GHG intensity (the ratio of emissions to economic outputs). Because of the close relationship between energy use and GHG emissions, the steel industry has set energy targets and is actively funding research of energy-efficient technologies to help achieve this goal.

Source: www.steel.org, www.sustainable-steel.org