Eurofer, European Steel Association (Brussels, Belgium):

Eggert A., General Director, e-mail: redaktion@stahleisen.de

The main challenge is the existential issue of the economic and business climate for steel. As in 2014 and 2015, the demand for steel in the EU is expected to rise in 2016. The reality is that the large-scale technologies of the kind needed to commercially produce steel at the CO₂ reduction levels sought by such policies as the EU’s Emissions Trading System of 43% from 2005–2030 — and by 80–95% by 2050 — are still in development. While in the coming decades technology may be developed that could achieve the CO₂ reductions sought, EU climate policy needs to be adapted to take into account not only the business realities of global steel production, but also of the contribution of steel to climate mitigation more generally. Given its achievements since the early days of what became the EU, the steel industry continues to assess economically feasible measures for improvement, whilst encouraging the use of methods that incentivize and support the industry’s efforts to further reduce energy use and CO₂ emissions. Given its economic, social and environmental importance, the steel industry’s best days can be seen to still be ahead of it. With global demand for steel likely to continue to rise steadily – there is plenty of space for an industry that has underpinned economic development for the past two centuries to be the basis of those to come.

1. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/eaec/html/index.en.html
2. http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/index_en.htm
3. “European” in this context combines ‘Western’ Europe and the Eas tern Bloc countries; Not USSR. https://www.worldsteel.org/dms/internetDocumentList/statistics-archive/yearbook-archive/Ahandbook-of-world-steel-statistics-1978/document/A%20handbook%20of%20world%20steel%20statistics%20 1978.pdf
4. https://www.worldsteel.org/dms/internetDocumentList/downloads/media-centre/Speeches-and-Presentations/20131126Mining-on-Top_Stockholm_Nae-Hee-Han/document/20131126Mining%20on%20Top_Stockholm_Nae%20Hee%20Han.pdf
5. http://www.bcg.de/documents/file154633.pdf