December, 2024- Fossil fuels account for most metals production emissions, according to a June 2024 report by S&P Global. “Energy use and GHG emissions vary widely depending on production processes and power sources.” European and American companies are under the most scrutiny by end use industries, including automotive and aerospace manufacturers, but also by consumers who demand that the products they buy and use have a low carbon footprint. There are other inducements to clean up the metals industry, such as government subsidies. This article covers recent developments around decarbonization in North America’s recycling, steel, aluminum and copper industries.
RECYCLING
REDUCE, REUSE, RENEW
THE RECYCLED MATERIALS ASSOCIATION (ReMA) has a Sustainability Network within its membership, according to Natalie Messer Betts, assistant vice president of sustainability for the trade group. People who have jobs focused on sustainability share information about projects they are working on.
Members are reducing their carbon footprint in several ways, says Betts. “One way is electrification, switching from fossil fuels to electric power in equipment like forklifts, cranes and material handling systems.” Another decarbonization tool recyclers use is efficiency measures. “This ranges from the installation of LED lighting to better routing, such as with transportation fleets, to using more of a product, improving yield.”
A third measure is to use renewable energy. This could be in the form of buying green power, depending on what each utility offers. Recyclers in the Pacific Northwest, for example, may buy from a grid supplied in large part through hydropower. “Others can choose to purchase green power directly through utilities that generate electricity through wind and solar energy, or may install their own on-site renewable sources,” she says. Some members are buying Renewable Energy Certificates. “Companies are also looking at alternative fuels for fleets shifting to electric, natural gas or biogas.”
Better sortation is another important strategy, as members remove impurities in their recycled products so higher recycled content can be used by the customer. “Some of our members are branding and marketing some of their products as net zero,” Betts says.
In metals sorting, sensors and machines replace hands and magnets. Xray fluorescence analyzers are giving way, in some applications, to laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technology.
Artificial intelligence also has a role: AI-guided robots are used in materials recovery facilities to pull recyclables from material streams. Other technologies are used to detect and separate materials based on qualities such as magnetism, density, shape, size, elemental composition, color and other characteristics. This allows ReMA members to separate and sort many tons of material much more efficiently.
“More customers ask for lower GHG content, and they are partnering with scrap companies,” Betts says. “Our industry has a competitive advantage compared with primary iron and steel production,” due to its low carbon intensity.
She says there is both interest and funding sources available from the federal government. “Several recycled materials projects have obtained funding through Department of Energy grants and loans. There are also challenge prizes being offered at the federal level for innovators that answer difficult questions about bringing down carbon intensity in industrial settings.”
ReMA offers an ESG toolkit that serves as a guide for members to approach environmental, social and governance protocols. Among other things, “this toolkit uses the GHG Protocol to understand and follow calculations for scope of emissions.” ReMA is a founding member of the Global Steel Climate Council.
STEEL
UNDER PRESSURE
THE U.S. STEEL INDUSTRY has a “tremendous story of low-emission, sustainable steelmaking, compared to the rest of the world,” says Philip K. Bell, president of the Steel Manufacturers Association. The fact that over 70 percent of production is through electric arc furnaces (with the rest being blast furnace output)—combined with the oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency—helps the U.S. serve as a decarbonization leader.
“Our performance in the U.S. is so good that other countries want to emulate us,” Bell says.
“Despite talk about hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration, when you look at the first step, it’s taking basic oxygen furnaces and blast furnaces down and converting production to EAFs and adding direct reduced iron. We have proven, commercial technologies,” he says.
The global industry is under pressure to reduce emissions and is adopting EAF technology to get there, says Bell.
“In the past five years, it has been communities, governments, civil society and trade organizations realizing the steel industry represents a significant percentage of GHG emissions. Pressure is coming through legislation and the Paris climate agreement.”
Even though the U.S. steel sector is advanced on emissions, producers understand more must be done, says Adina Renee Adler, executive director Global Steel Climate Council. “A lot of pressure is coming from customers that want more sustainable materials. They are having to disclose the carbon quotient” in their product declarations. “They want to be responsive to the pressure points. They want to be accountable.”
Because automakers have plants all over the world, they are looking to apply one carbon reduction standard, if possible, and to make business decisions around those, according to Adler. There are rules on incorporating recycled content, circularity and more, so manufacturers want to purchase materials from low-carbon sources.
Adler says that GSCC offers science-based emission targets, and qualifies steelmakers for certification. Steel Dynamics Inc. recently met the GSCC targets but acknowledged the desire to do more. “SDI’s base year is 2022, when emissions were 0.94 tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of steel. The interim target by 2030 is 0.8 tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of steel and, by 2050, the target is 0.12 tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of steel.”
When one certifies a product, “it is independently verified, and you must annually publish the emissions intensity,” Bell says. “This is not just an environmental product declaration and you leave it be for five years. Each company must prove the reduction.”
Adler notes that steelmakers are looking at a wide range of solutions going forward. For example, SDI said it would “invest in bio carbon development as a replacement for anthracite.” Other companies are using renewable energy and nuclear power. “There is also a lot of work in optimizing scrap; scrap sorting technology is improving,” says Bell.
“It’s good that we have organizations like GSCC and leaders like Adina leading us to a lower carbon steel industry,” he says. “We have to meet people where they are but, currently, if you want to get to lower emissions, technologies exist that are commercially viable and already available.”
The steel climate standard is meant to be ambitious. “The companies themselves are not just saying they will make a more sustainable product; they are already doing that. We are not here to greenwash. That’s what excites me about this,” says Adler.
CARBON FLOW
THE STEEL CLIMATE STANDARD OPERATIONAL BOUNDARY
ALUMINUM
STRATEGIES OUTLINED
ACCORDING TO A ROADMAP ISSUED by the Aluminum Association in May 2024, achieving net zero targets will require aluminum production emissions declines of 24 percent by 2030; 63 percent by 2040; and 92 percent by 2050 compared to a 2021 emissions baseline. These targets are challenging while output is projected to increase by around 80 percent during this period, driven by growing demand for the metal to support sustainability efforts in various sectors.
Charles Johnson, president of the Aluminum Association, says the North American industry has been actively seeking to decarbonize since the 1990s.
“There was a broad recognition that we had to do something about noncarbon PSC gases. In primary smelting, we had non-automated potline controls. The anode effect means gaseous buildup, a spike in voltage and a drop in aluminum production. O-gassing was heavy in PSCs, and had a profound effect” on emissions.
Starting in the U.S. and Canada, Johnson says that technology was developed that “basically obliterated the anode eect through computer controls and, in partnership with the EPA, that technology was given to the world.”
When it comes to carbon entering the 2000s, most of the interest was the amount of carbon in production and finished products, he says. A material assessment in 1998 looked at carbon in aluminum entering automobiles. Later a study was released on the life cycle assessment (LCA) for aluminum cans. In 2010, the first LCA for automotive aluminum was performed.
“Through these tools, the industry learned that over 80 percent of the impact is in the use phase, not the production phase. So our understanding of materials and carbon evolved,” Johnson says.
In the last five years, the conversation shifted from material use in different environments/applications, moving to an assessment of future impact. “So we developed a carbon roadmap, building on the work we did with the International Aluminum Institute and EU Aluminum. Regionally, 80 percent of aluminum made in North America is made with recycled content and most of the smelting is performed in Canada which means the U.S. is 50 percent less carbon intensive than the rest of the world.”
The roadmap, says Johnson, “tells us where the carbon is. We have carbon lakes in refining but that is offshore, but we can still advance technologically. In North America, we must decarbonize our energy supply. Natural gas res our reheat furnaces. It’s not the same as using other fossil fuels. But a lot of our carbon footprint is attributed to that.
“We can do some things inside our own facility and others we can do in partnership with our supply chain,” he says. The roadmap also quantities the impact of recycling, which takes a mere 5 percent of the energy intensity that new smelting production requires.
The report “makes a basket of policy and technology recommendations,” Johnson says, and “the roadmap will change over time” to reflect changing conditions.
He notes that future demand “is going up because aluminum is being used to lightweight all sorts of products: auto, energy, battery and many other applications. Because of aluminum’s sustainability, demand is growing.”
COPPER
STANDARDS & PRACTICES
KEY PLAYERS IN THE COPPER INDUSTRY are doing their part to clean up the air, rivers, lakes, oceans and soils of the world.
The Wieland Group started up its 60-acre photovoltaic system near the company headquarters in Ulm, Germany, in October. The company generates 29 gigawatt hours of renewable electricity annually on an open eld of 24 hectares. Wieland invested nearly 20 million euros into the installation of around 48,000 solar modules, 82 inverters, 14 transformer systems and the construction of a 110/20 kV substation.
The Wieland Group is pursuing an “ambitious decarbonization target: to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 46 percent by 2030, compared to the 2018-19 fiscal year. The goal is to achieve net zero emissions across the entire value chain by 2045.
The company plans to reach that goal by only using scrap to make new products. The use of recycled content is already at 77 percent. Wieland will electrify all plants and processes in the future, entirely avoiding emissions caused by fossil fuels.
The energy company Vattenfall is building a solar park in Nauen, Brandenburg, which will supply Wieland with 46 gigawatt hours of electricity annually, beginning in 2025.
In purely mathematical terms, this corresponds to the average annual electricity requirement of 13,000 four-person households, enabling Wieland to cover an additional 13 percent of its electricity requirements in Germany from renewable energy sources and reduce the company’s CO2 emissions from purchased energy (Scope 2) by an additional 3 percent.
The U.S. brass rod industry, represented by the Copper Development Association (CDA), secured an independent recycled content certification from GreenCircle Certified LLC in late August. This certification validates that the industry maintained a minimum of 92 percent recycled content for all outgoing materials cast on site at participating brass rod mills in 2023, representing over 85 percent of domestic mill shipments. This marks the first widely recognized industry average recycled content claim for a copper or copper alloy semifinished product form produced in the United States.
GreenCircle is a third-party certification entity that provides independent verification of sustainability claims related to an organization’s products and operations.
“Brass rod is the epitome of a circular metals system,” said Adam Estelle, CDA’s president and CEO. “This certification independently verifies brass’s exceptional sustainability story at a critical time as the public prioritizes greener products in the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
