Requirements for decarbonizing the steel industry in Europe 2022

Hydrogen can be used in the steel industry as a reducing agent to produce iron from iron ores. This method results in a considerable reduction of CO₂ emissions when compared to other traditional methods of iron production. The average European Union steel plant would require around 1.2 gigawatts of renewable energy to decarbonize, that is to produce enough hydrogen to extract iron from iron ores. If only solar PV was used instead, the energy requirement would increase to some 4.5 gigawatts. Furthermore, switching from the conventional BF-BOF (blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace) method to the hydrogen based DRI/EAF (direct reduced iron/electric arc furnace) would require 5.3 million metric tons of green hydrogen and 370 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity.