Steel sector making big strides in green transition, industry body says

China's steel industry has achieved notable advancements in its green transition with major steel enterprises significantly reducing their environmental impact, according to the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) on Monday.

By 2023, energy consumption per ton of steel production has dropped from 694 kilograms of standard coal equivalent in 2005 to 557 kilograms. Additionally, sulfur dioxide emissions have been slashed by 92.6 percent and dust emissions by 88.5 percent.

Yao Lin, chairman of the CISA, said: "Green and low-carbon initiatives are the primary focus for the steel industry's transformation and upgrade. By the end of June this year, 140 steel enterprises with over 600 million metric tons of crude steel capacity had completed or partially completed ultra-low emission transformations, passed our evaluations and were announced on our website. The average investment per ton of steel for these transformations was about 466.36 yuan ($65)."

According to Yao, in the first half of this year, key steel enterprises' energy-saving investment took up seven percent in their total investments, an increase of 0.9 percentage points year-on-year.

Statistics from the association showed that in the first half of this year, the total energy consumption of key member enterprises dropped by 1.8 percent year-on-year and comprehensive energy consumption per ton of steel production fell by 0.16 percent.