UK-based steelmaker British Steel has announced that it plans to build two electric arc furnaces worth £1.25 billion in total, one each at its Scunthorpe and Teesside plants, to decarbonize its operations. The company is awaiting appropriate support from the UK government to achieve its plan.
The new furnaces are planned to be operational by late 2025, while the aging iron and steelmaking operations at Scunthorpe, which are responsible for the vast majority of the company’s carbon emissions, will be replaced. The company proposes maintaining current operations until the transition to electric arc steelmaking.
“We are confident our proposals will help secure the low-embedded carbon steelmaking the UK requires now and for decades to come. However, we need the UK to adopt the correct policies and frameworks now to back our decarbonization drive. Governments in the countries where our major competitors operate have adopted such policies and the longer we wait for their implementation in the UK, the more impact and challenge this will have on our competitiveness and the country's ability to meet its carbon objectives,” Xijun Cao, British Steel CEO, said.
The company aims to produce net-zero steel by 2050 and significantly reduce its carbon intensity by 2030 and 2035.
