Prospective scenarios on energy efficiency and CO2 emissions in the European Iron & Steel industry

• European Iron & Steel industry is modeled.
• The study prospects the energy efficiency and CO2 emissions in the European Iron & Steel industry.
• Low impact of the current best available technology in reduction of energy and CO2 emissions in the integrated route.
• Innovative technologies represent the key to obtain important reduction in energy and CO2 emission in the integrated route.
• High impact of the current best available technology in reduction of energy and CO2 emissions in the Electrical route.

The Iron & Steel industry is one of the biggest industrial CO2 emitters in the European Union. The present work analyzes the potential for the improvement of the energy efficiency and CO2 emission reduction for this sector up to 2030. Three scenarios are analyzed: baseline scenario (BS) representing the current evolution of this sector and two alternative scenarios (AS1 and AS2) to study the sensitivity of fuel and resource prices and CO2 emission prices. In the integrated production route all the scenarios highlight the importance of breakthrough technologies, such as Top Gas Recycling, to obtain performance improvement in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In the secondary production route conditions under BS scenario are enough for a suitable incorporation of the best technologies in this route making insensitive the possible incentives due to higher prices in fuel and resources or CO2 emissions.