By Jo Nova
Lets build an industry on a niche fashionista item where the main selling point is that it “makes the weather nicer”?
No one, bar anyone, believes China gives a toss about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, not when China burns four times as much coal as the second largest coal burning nation on Earth, and they are increasing the rate they build new coal plants. China won’t be buying our sacred Green Steel to make their own cars and bridges.
Where is this imaginary market for Green Steel?
The only “need” for Green Steel on earth is because it’s a fashion accessory at UN events, or because some people believe it can change the weather. There is no intrinsic benefit, it’s not shinier or stronger, it just has more social scoring points, or bragability if you go to inner-city upmarket arts parties. Technically, according to the experts, owning green steel will confer benefits like extending winter for a few more days a year (theoretically). I can’t see that catching on.
This is a market that the bottom could fall out of any day
In May, only 13% of UK Voters said Net Zero goals were more important than their cost of living. So 87% of the market is already not interested in buying Green Steel instead of normal steel. And that 13% “peak” is only maintained with bullying, censorship and non-stop propaganda by the legacy media. Imagine how fast that niche group would shrink if word spreads that Net Zero policies are killing birds and whales and hurting the poor? Or that thousands of scientists are skeptics — including men who walked on the moon and won Nobel Prizes (Vale Ivar Gievar!).
Half of Australia doesn’t want to pay a single cent on Net Zero targets. The IPA research showed barely 7% of the population are willing to spend anything meaningful. So 93% of Australians don’t want “green steel”. The 7% figure who might hypothetically pay more for “weather changing steel” can only shrink from here.
The only market for Green Steel in China is the one we make, sorry, we fake here at home, with government decrees, forced carbon markets, subsidies, and Soviet rules.
In the EU there is a small premium paid for green steel, but they have a carbon market and targets. In the US where people are now more free to choose their favourite steel, the green steel market is “stagnant”.
Devastatingly, Fastmarket reports that the differential paid for green steel was “$0” per short ton (per long ton too!).
That’s how much people in the US are willing to pay voluntarily for green steel. Nothing.
There may come a time soon, when it will be negative. Don’t give me that…
In a survey of car manufacturers, they were only ordering enough “fossil free” steel to cover 2% of the global car market by 2030.
If Australia tries to make wind-solar-battery-power “Green Steel” five minutes later, China will start nuclear power green steel, and wipe out our market
If the gormless West taxes and subsidizes the population into paying more for green steel, China will be only too happy to profit from selling niche fashionista pointless items to the West. If we delude ourselves that it is a market with “hundreds of thousands of jobs” — a moment later, China will process green steel with electric arcs powered by “low emission” nuclear plants.
Our fantasia wind-powered-solar-biomass-battery made token-smelters will be out-competed in a minute. By 2030 China is aiming to be the worlds largest nuclear power. Think about that…
REFERENCES
Source: coal consumption — OWID
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
Aa I understand it, the only “green steel” that can be produced from iron ore is with reduction of the ore using hydrogen. The hydrogen comes from the electrolysis of water using wind or solar at huge expense. The only production of steel by this method appears to be in pilot plants.
The “other” green steel comes from electric arc furnaces but that is merely recycled scrap or further refining of steel produced from conventional sources such as in blast furnaces. Also, some reduction in such furnaces is possible using hydrogen.
About 54kg of hydrogen are required to produced 1kg of steel so enormous quantities of hydrogen are required.
It’s insane, and our politicians and the public serpents and subsidy harvesters who tell them what to think have no clue.
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No one in the world produces steel without producing CO2. The UK has abandoned coal completely, so they can only melt, not make steel, ending the British industrial revolution to save the planet. And half the world’s steel is produced by China, mainly by smelting using Australian (metallurgical) coal. China now producing 40% of the world’s CO2 has produced more CO2 in total across history than all other countries combined. But our Prime Minister and Andrew Forrest promise to do better in Australia and produce steel without producing CO2? Coal, gas and oil still produce 65% of Australia’s electricity, so even smelting means CO2.
So stop Australian steel making? Close Whyalla and Port Kembla and all the electric arc furnaces.
Why? Forrest will still get his billions from China for his iron ore. What does Albanese get?
And where do we get our steel then?
Are we going to war in plastic submarines? Our largest plastics manufacturer, Chinese owned, just closed and left costing 800 jobs and all plastics recycling in Australia. Likely because of Albanese’s 35% punitive carbon dioxide tax. Either way, we get the idea.
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Note that one of the scams the subsidy harvesters will use to pretend their steel is “green”* is to produce it by conventional methods but use “carbon” capture and storage or “carbon” offset scams where they pretend to plant trees to offset the “carbon” (sic) produced in conventional processes.
*Obviously all CO2 production is intrinsically green because more CO2 means a greener planet, although only a tiny proportion of atmospheric CO2 is of anthropogenic origin, maybe 4%.
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NASA proved that more CO2 means more trees. 14% more CO2, 14% more trees.
But few realise this proves a much more important point, that more trees does not mean lower CO2.
Sequestering trillions of tons of CO2 in trees has zero effect on CO2 levels. This confirms the great gaping hole in the entire story, that CO2 is in rapid global equilibrium and nothing humans can do or have done makes any difference at all. It’s so obviously just the vapour pressure of a dissolved gas.
How is it possible that sequestering trillions of tons of CO2 has zero impact on atmospheric CO2? Because the ocean instantly replaces the lost CO2 maintaining the ratio of [CO2]atmosphere/[CO2]ocean
I find it gobsmacking that people do not apply simple principles of physical chemistry, which is all about two things, equilibrium and stoichiometry. CO2 is in equilibrium. Sure it drifts slowly upwards.
The CO2 graph for the last 55 years(not the data) from New Zealand is absolute proof. No sign at all of human activity.
It’s not just that we did not cause CO2 to go up. It’s that we cannot make it go down. Or stop going up.
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And I get really annoyed with physicists. They work in a world of cause and effect, rules, actions and reactions. Chemistry is explicable with physics, but it is not physics. And chemistry is about equilibrium, balances. Always the equation with the arrows going both ways, not just one way. CO2 is in equilibrium continuously and rapidly exchanging with the ocean. 98% of CO2 is in the ocean. Which means 98% of all extra emissions goes into the ocean and cannot stick in the air for no reason at all. And the reason CO2 is going up in the upper layer is that it has to go through the upper layer to get to the air. They have simply flipped cause and effect.
CO2 is carried in vast quantities in the currents which utterly control our weather. Like El Nino. There are hundreds of these currents and the water is stuffed with CO2. So if warming goes up, there is a good chance CO2 goes up as well. Nothing to do with puny humans and their tiny engines and old plant matter.
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Correction, 50-55g of hydrogen are required to produce 1kg of steel.
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For those that don’t do chemistry, or do it well.
Fe2O3, (haematite), has 3 mole of oxygen that needs to be removed from the iron as it is reduced. That would require 3 mole of hydrogen gas, (H2), to balance out the needs of the oxygen.
So about 6g will make 2 mole of iron, (about 112g). 1000/112 times 6 equals the 50-55g.
Obviously some reducing plants will use magnetite AND some of the impurities with the iron will also be reduced, so the actual hydrogen needs will be a little higher than the calculated value.
And of course, this assumes that you don’t lose any Hydrogen and that none is left over, trapped in the iron as it is poured off.
Now…. would you like to know how much electricity is required to make that kg of iron?
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The basic economic argument for energy mining (coal, oil, gas) is that you have to get at least 5 times as much energy from it than you expended in getting it out of the ground and to where you want to use it. Now keep in mind that hydrogen requires more energy to generate it (there are no hydrogen mines) than you ever get from burning the gas. Also being the most explosive gas known to mankind with the widest flammable range (4 to 75% in air) of any gas and is explosive for most of that range. It is porous through many metals and is difficult to contain. So storage and safe transport is difficult and expensive. Now tell me again how we are going to run our industry and transport on green hydrogen?
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It seems we will be doing it until they crash.
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You could do a similar calculation for the production of aluminium.
The reason that carbon anodes are used in the process is because the carbon is consumed, mopping up the oxygen.
The chemical needs of the carbon, (wanting oxygen so that it forms CO2), reduces the amount of electricity that is required to directly reduce the aluminium.
In theory, you could pump in enough electricity to split the aluminium away from the oxygen producing Al and O2 WITHOUT using any consumable chemicals. BUT the power bill would be immense. And that’s why carbon is used. It effectively provides more energy into the reaction, reducing the voltage required across the reduction cell.
Aluminium is already considered to be solid electricity, imagine reducing it without carbon.
When you think about green steel, (hydrogen sourced from electrolysis), then in reality, the process described above, (without the carbon anode), is going to work out to be extremely energy intensive. Well beyond commercial returns.
And that’s why green steel will never go beyond a fad. It’s too damned expensive, especially when a cheap, proven technology already exists.
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You could do a similar calculation for Big Wind Bowen- for each litre of oxygen he inhales, 5 litres of hot air is exhaled….
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The dream of green steel in Europe is dying as nobody is willing to make it. Promises to do so are fading away fast. The other dream of using electric arc furnaces instead of blast furnaces is that steel can’t be endlessly recycled as it becomes increasingly contaminated particularly with copper. This makes it susceptible to cracking when processed so even thin sheet for tin cans can’t be produce.
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Green energy, as Kermit the frog would sing-
is like a dream, it’s not easy being green-
Unless you’re a utopian-ist
un-constrained by inconvenient facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRZ-IxZ46ng&t=2s
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Good comment David, thanks for sharing it was very educational (I am trying to be more balanced)
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Funny…. I always thought the best way to market something is to offer it as a cheaper alternative. As I recall, before reality and empirical evidence turned up, green energy was always touted to be ‘free’ energy.
In this new virtue signaling world self interest is now a sin, and self sacrifice – for no tangible benefit – is not only fashionable, but compulsory.
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It’s not only coal, China by far and away has built in is building more solar and wind than the rest of the world combined, and output now surpasses coal. So green steel is a realistic goal
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China building solar and wind is just virtue signaling to the woke West to pretend they care for the CO2 scam and as a sales showcase for them to sell more economy destroying wind and solar plantations to the woke West.
If they took the CO2 scam seriously they wouldn’t be building two coal power stations per week would they? And since you keep telling us wind and solar is the cheapest and most reliable form of electricity production, why would they?
“Green” steel is just a fantasy of the ignorant who have no clue about the enormous amounts of energy required to produce steel or removal of oxygen or sulfur from any metal ore.
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Another thought is that how do we know that the amount of wind and solar China claims to have installed is true?
Anyone that buys Chinese products knows that their specifications are usually falsely over-rated.
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China is actively subverting the US Energy, Steel and Mining markets by indirectly financing green activists to aggressively pursue them in the left bias American Environmental Courts. The Republicans & Trump have been slow to recognize how significantly China has subverted the US system and how much damage and delay they are creating!
Don’t worry, China are doing the same in Australia, they are just being a bit quieter while their “pretty boy” has the reins!
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Thankfully for the Chicomms Australia has s large number of useful idiots embedded in all levels of society up to including the PM himself who is a committed life-long communist.
Book:
Trevor Loudon
Comrade Prime Minister: Anthony Albanese’s 40-Year Alliance with Australian Communism
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It’s called the “Peter principle”, vividly on display in our military and I would strongly suggest parliament.
I present blackout Bowen as evidence of it’s existence.
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You keep dreaming that dream.
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That claim is made often but is inaccurate because most of installed capacity of so called “renewables” in China relates to hydroelectric.
Wind and solar are of course major exports from China so for sales and marketing purposes China installs some but remaining as a small supplementary source and intermittent operation backed by controllable generators in power stations.
And installed capacity is misleading because capacity factor is average output and that for wind is 30-35% of installed capacity and far less for solar.
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China is paying lip service to the idea of using hydrogen to replace coal and as DM suggests, its only virtue signalling.
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Peter
Are you living the green dream you tout to others?
Solar panels on the roof, windmill in the back yard, battery and EV in the garage, and most importantly, cut off from the grid?
If you are not, why should we believe your fantasies.
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Yeah right…and I saw a flying pink elephant the other day.
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Either delusional or a shill for China.
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Or both.
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I’m still trying to figure how you’d get a green pigment into steel. Are you thinking of nickel, as in the green crystals of nickel sulphate? But their colour depends on water of crystallization.
Green hydrogen is an even sillier idea – imagine attaching any pigment to molecules with a molecular weight of 2.
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I thought they used food colouring?
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I suppose you buy into the argument that Western countries are more culpable because they emit more CO2 per capita. If CO2 is such an existential threat to the planet and its occupants, it would make sense to employ policies to reduce the net amount of it rather than allowing carbon trading and offsetting.
Increasing the amount of renewables in China is not going to displace coal power nor reduce their net output of CO2. It’s simply a part of their all-in approach to feed the insatiable demand for energy from industry.
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No wonder then that Labor has been struck dumb on supporting Chris Bowen and his Net Zero ambitions. All their pet projects (green hydrogen to make green steel, Australian manufactured solar panels to replace Hunter Valley coal mining jobs) has ceased. Solar/wind farms are facing a reality check as international investors pull out in the face of an inability to feed their so called cheap power into the National grid due to land holder objections.
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There is a “Greensteel Australia” website at https://h2greensteel.com.au/ .
It says they are going to produce 2 million tonnes of steel annually.
According to Goolag AI:
In 2023 Australia produced 273 TWh of electricity from ALL sources.
In 2023 the total production of wind and solar electricity in Australia was 77 TWh.
So this green fantasy steel would consume nearly 10% (2023 figures) of Australia’s wind and solar output. Expensive, unreliable electricity that WILL require battery backup at further enormous expense PLUS enormous taxpayer subsidies as per the aluminium industry which also can’t produce competitively using Australia’s hugely expensive electricity.
In reality it’s just another cruel subsidy-harvesting scheme of the Elites to the detriment of hard-working Australians.
And for the anti-energy lobbyists who say it won’t need subsidies, who is going to buy it if it’s not competitive with conventional steel production? Aluminium proves the impossibility of running an energy intensive industry on expensive “green” electricity.
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I didn’t see the energy inputs required to bake out the hydrogen from the finished steel.
I’m assuming that several hours in an oven is going to consume a few electrons too. Or are we meant to use brittle steel and accept this as a new ‘benefit’ of being green?
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Yes, so the energy equation is far worse. Those figures don’t include post-processing.
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Interesting site:-) https://www.reliance-foundry.com/blog/difference-cast-iron-wrought
.
[Yes, Interesting. But perhaps one for a daily post even though iron is topical. This post is maybe more about rort iron than wrought. – Raquel]
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I am not a metallurgist, but I do work with all manner of steels and sundry non-ferrous materials.
If this caper is about the evils of “Carbon”, then it is just another mega-fraud from the usual suspects.
The defining characteristic of steel is the by Adjusting the amount of actual Carbon in the crystal structure it is almost a walk in the park (stroll by the blast furnaces?) to produce steels that are very soft (almost pure Iron), to steels that are so hard that they are used to CUT other steels.
This is achieved by ACTUAL engineers and scientists.
It IS possible to make “steel” in an electric furnace an with Hydrogen as the reducing agent, instead of Carbon. But it takes a spectacular amount of “electrickery”. MUCH more than than an Aluminium operation.
Anyone interested in all of this should go and look at how Iron and Steel have been produced for over two thousand years.
Hydrogen-fueled smelters??
Pray tell us from whence vast amounts of this magic material will be sourced?
And, just for giggles:
There is an interesting phenomenon called “Hydrogen embrittlement” that occurs if more than a minuscule amount of Hydrogen remains in steel after processing.
This is particularly “EXCITING” in certain high-grade Stainless Steels, like 416.
Then again the actual intent of this caper is two-fold.
Firstly: To drive civilization back to the Stone Age.
Secondly: To provoke REAL PEOPLE to speak up in protest. At which point, said REAL PEOPLE will be targeted for “attitude adjustment”; often at “Executive” level.
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And, I forgot to mention why every miner and his dog are hot for Australian COAL and petroleum.
SULPHUR, or more specifically, the LACK of it in Oz combustibles.
The colal from Queensland mines, particulaly in the Bown Basin, is dasically pure Anthracite.
Thust it ts use in eirn and steel manufacture produces superior steel. Even moreso if it is usid in making the “aorospace-grade” stainless steels. traces of sulphur in the se latter steels, wWILL result in catastrophic failures,especially in rolled bar, as used in high-pressure hyfraiulics, etc.
Oz petroleum has the LOWEAST Sulphur content of such resources, IN THE WORLD. This has been known for decades.Back in th emid 1070s,I was part to a university lab experiment that was supposed to measure the amount of Sulphur in fuel from the local commercial oulet.
We could NOT get a reading, even using a lot of expensive lab toys.
In the end, the lab tech decided to concoct a special “brew” so we could at least heve dome numbers to play with..
The Cooper basin still holds a LOT of this sulpher=free, super-light crude, out near Eromanga. n one property that had been thoroughly worked over by a herd of Schlumberger “seismic” trucks, one test dam holding many thousands of litres of the stuff. was liberally sigh-posted to warn of the hazards of smoking within 100 feet of the “dam”.
The property owner, being a practical lad, used to pump it into 44 gallon (Imperial) drums and run a lot of his diesel-powered equipment with it, after filtering out dust and other detritus.
Probably a bit rough on the Mercedes “S” Class,but the ancient Lister generator plants slurped it up.
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So: Three guesses why our rice-propelled northern cousins are so interested in our “resources” Second two guesses do not count.
And don’t forget the uranium and rare earths.
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Low carbon- Hmm I recall my 5th form Chem class- this was known as Wrought Iron- something that was superseded 150 years ago..
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Yesterday, while driving, I was subjected to an “interview” where a green advocate spoke about the advantages of Australia becoming deeply involved in this novel hydrogen based steelmaking. That their ABCCC can so blatantly promote this politically based drivel is an insult to all taxpayers who expect the truth from government.
Look at Bruce’s great comment above and then consider the deep state ugliness of this latest scheme to make Australia a laughing stock in the eyes of the Chinese “scientists” who are behind this.
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The Fastmarkets image mentions “low carbon steel“. This is confusing because there is a product – Low carbon steel, also known as mild steel, that contains a carbon content of approximately 0.05% to 0.30% by weight. Also, there is “electrical steel” {used in the cores of electromagnetic devices such as motors, generators, and transformers} that has a carbon level 0.005% or lower. It is also costly because of its special properties.
Regular carbon steel, often referred to simply as carbon steel, contains carbon as its main alloying element, typically ranging from 0.05% to 2.1% by weight. I’ll guess this is what one gets if it is “green”.
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It probably doesn’t matter because the people promoting “green” steel have no clue how steel is made let alone its physical metallurgy.
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It’s the endless need to sound authoritative without knowing what you’re talking about. My guess would be the term ” Low carbon steel,” is supposed to relate to its manufacture i.e. without using carbon monoxide as a reducing agent, rather than what people who work with metal know as steel. Just as “carbon” is used to describe carbon dioxide, “gay” refers to sexual orientation rather than a state of happiness, “climate” as a way to talk about the weather, equality is achieved through skin colour, etc etc etc.
The problem of course is young people are taught this double speak. There are reasons dead languages are used in certain areas, the words meanings remain unchanged by time.
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Achieving Net Zero, a report from the Global Warming Foundation UK
Executive summary
The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed £3 trillion, a work-
force comparable in size to the NHS will be required for 30
years, including a doubling of the present number of elec-
trical engineers, and the bill of specialist materials is of a
size that for the UK alone is comparable to the global an-
nual production of many key minerals. On the manpower
front we will have to rely on the domestic workforce, as eve-
rywhere else in the world is working towards the same tar-
get. If they were not so working, the value of the UK-specific
target is moot. The scale of this project suggests that a war
footing and a command economy will be essential, as major
cuts to other favoured forms of expenditure, such as health,
education and defence, will be needed. Without a detailed
roadmap, as exemplified by the International Technology
Roadmap for Semiconductors that drove the electronics
revolution after 1980, the target is simply unattainable.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/03/Kelly-Net-Zero-Progress-Report.pdf?mc_cid=3de10e3d7a&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
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It’s more likely they will generously give it back to us as green bombs and artillary shells. In 1939 we kept selling iron ore to Japan right upto the point where they used it to make steel bullets.
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Cheering news of the new Trump appointee (won’t please some!): https://www.skynews.com.au/insights-and-analysis/australias-climate-left-wont-be-able-to-stand-new-trump-appointee-steven-e-koonin-who-dares-to-question-the-science-around-global-warming/news-story/63d7c27c53b3ba0c50d863d6d2ee92f9
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‘The three were named as physicist Steven E. Koonin, atmospheric scientist John Christy, and meteorologist Roy Spencer.’
This is a real breakthrough in the climate wars, it should be front and centre on the Coalition platform.
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Steven Elliot Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.
He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering
The first issues are that
1 no one has proven the increase in CO2 is man made. Quite the reverse. It was disproven in 1958 and many times since.
2 No one has shown that the increase causes the amount of warming seen. Radiation physics shows this is impossible. The maximum warming from doubling CO2 would be 0.7C.
3 No one has any idea of the Climate effects of the ocean currents and no one models them, which is very strange when they contain 99.9% of all surface heat and provide ALL water on earth or all countries would be deserts. El Nino for example is not only unpredictable, it is massive and one of many such currents.
4 and no one has proven that an increase in CO2 is anything less than a wonderful thing for life on earth. The benefits are endless, not least more food, more trees, more rain and a booming ecosystem. Even less intense storms, provably though simple meteorology. Power goes as Delta T/sqrt(T).
But more importantly, the basis of banning carbon fuels has to be proven absolutely before you legislate massive costs and sacrifices by your people. No action should be taken unless and until the business of man made CO2 produced dangerous Global Warming is absolutely proven. Consensus is not science.
And even then it is a cost/benefit ratio and mankind has more pressing problems. Idiocy like Snowy II is just theft. Prime Ministers are not kings.
Tim Flannery, our former Chief Climate Commissioner had no tertiary mathematics, physics, chemistry,… His degree was in English at La Trobe, not any science at all. He is Australia’s best known expert on giant extinct wombats. Nothing more. Like Al Gore, also a Graduate in English/Politics, not science.
And the Chief of the United Nations, a teacher and former physicist tells us the Oceans are Boiling, simply because he did not understand the world record 100 degree shallow ocean temperature reported from Florida was in Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. But not a single Climate reporter laughed.
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Jonova, You are a gem. You are saving Australia and educating the West.
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What planet do thee NetZero clowns think they’re on? Planet Earth is a carbon based planet on which all life forms depend on carbon because carbon is the fundamental building block of all life on Earth. This is because of carbon’s unique ability to form stable and complex molecules, which are essential for the structure and function of living organisms. Life on Earth is governed by the Carbon Cycle. Evidently, these NetZero practitioners are blind to these facts. They unwittingly want to decarbonise the Carbon Cycle.
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I read somewhere once carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe, happy to be corrected.
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