If BlueScope is serious about going carbon-neutral and making "green steel" it could move faster to develop technology itself, the director of a major energy transition company has told the Mercury.
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Lindsay Soutar is director of REenergise, which works with companies on moving to 100 per cent renewable energy.
In an opinion piece in today's Mercury, he said BlueScope's statements this week on spending $150 million to reduce carbon emissions, signing up for a proportion of renewable energy, and the long timeline before green steel became viable, could have gone further in promising urgent action.
"This is good progress, but it's not at the scale that we are seeing from leading steel producers globally," Mr Soutar said.
"BlueScope Steel has the opportunity to be a leader in Australia's energy transition, and secure the future for the Illawarra's heavy industry by becoming a green steel champion. So why is the company dragging its feet?
"Green steel has the potential to be the next big boom industry for Australia - and the Illawarra, with its long and proud history as a steelmaking centre could be in the middle of that. But it will take conviction from BlueScope to make it a reality."
BlueScope this week said moves towards green steel - made without carbon - would not be likely to be available for decades.
BlueScope's new chief executive of climate change Gretta Stephens gave investors an extensive briefing on Monday where she said decarbonised technology for steel production would not be commercially viable until the 2040s.
Ms Stephens said difficulties ahead would include access to renewable energy and hydrogen, while government policies would need to support the process.
Chief executive Mark Vassella told the briefing government policies would need to be set in a way to ensure BlueScope was not left with "some sort of structural cost disadvantage because of policy".
Mr Soutar wanted more ambition.
"BlueScope has this week raised a number of issues around the challenges of green steel production - those challenges are real but BlueScope can either say 'we have a role to address them and we're going to be ambitious and make it happen' or 'it's really hard and other people have to do the work first'," he said.
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Ben Langford
Senior journalist writing on the environment. Opinion columnist, independent. We rely on your news tips so please, don't be shy to let us know what's going on.
Senior journalist writing on the environment. Opinion columnist, independent. We rely on your news tips so please, don't be shy to let us know what's going on.
