Going Beyond Steel: Carbon Capture

Capturing carbon is only the beginning. The real challenge starts once it leaves the steel plant. Transporting, storing, and reusing CO₂ requires new infrastructure, new partnerships, and new ways of thinking. In the process, captured carbon is no longer seen as waste but as a valuable resource.

For decades, carbon dioxide was regarded as an unavoidable consequence of steel production. Today, it is beginning to look like something else: a feedstock. As new partnerships form around captured CO₂, steel plants are starting to become suppliers of far more than steel, feeding value chains that extend well beyond the industry’s own gates.

Steel remains essential to an electrified world. At the same time, the industry must continue supplying steel in the volume that is required while sharply reducing its own emissions. ­According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the steel industry accounts for around 8 percent of global energy-related CO₂ emissions. The destination is clear. The route is not. Hydrogen-based direct reduction is widely expected to play a central role in the industry’s long-term future. Yet blast furnaces will remain part of global steel production for decades. With their operating lives commonly measured in decades, the capital invested in them rules out an instant switch. Dr. Alexander ­Fleischanderl, Chief Technology Officer and Global Head of Green Steel at Primetals Technologies, compares the industry to a battleship. “You cannot simply change direction overnight.”

His conclusion is pragmatic. Energy efficiency, electrification, hydrogen, and carbon capture will all have a role to play. “We should remain ­technology ­agnostic. There is no silver bullet,” he says. Carbon capture, in his view, is not a rival to hydrogen but one way of reducing emissions while the broader energy transition ­gathers pace. The question, these days, is no longer only how to reduce emissions. It is what to do with the carbon that remains.

Capturing CO₂ is only the first step. “The technology works,” says Fleischanderl. “The real challenge is building the ecosystem around it.” Once captured, carbon must be cleaned, compressed, transported, stored, or converted into valuable products. Each of these steps requires infrastructure, regulation, investment, and forward-looking enterprises interested in purchasing the captured carbon at scale. Chemical companies can convert CO₂ into methanol, urea for fertilizers, and other chemical feedstocks. Fuel producers are exploring synthetic aviation and marine fuels while other utilization pathways include Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). Where no viable use exists, geological storage remains essential.

Many of these utilization pathways also require large amounts of renewable electricity or hydrogen. Their success therefore depends as much on regional energy infrastructure and economics as on the capture ­technology itself. “The steel industry can no longer solve this on its own,” Fleischanderl says. The task no longer ends at the plant gate. It extends across entire value chains.

Perhaps the bigger shift is not technological. It is organizational. “Years ago, as steel industry representatives, we got away with staying within our own circles,” ­Fleischanderl says. “Now we’re talking to ­chemical companies, utility companies, cement producers, energy providers, infrastructure operators, and many ­others.”

Captured carbon is creating entirely new relationships that barely existed a decade ago. Once regarded as waste, it is becoming a valuable feedstock that connects industries through shared decarbonization goals. Those relationships depend on long-term cooperation, common standards, and coordinated investment. Decarbonization is becoming a shared industrial effort rather than the responsibility of a single sector.

These partnerships are beginning to reshape the steel plant itself. Steel will remain its primary product. It may not be the only one worth selling. Captured carbon, process gases, and waste heat can all become valuable resources for neighboring industries.

That future is already taking shape. At ArcelorMittal Ghent, the Steelanol project, developed with Primetals Technologies, LanzaTech, and E4tech/ERM, converts blast furnace gases into ethanol. Now fully ramped up, the facility produces up to 80 million liters of advanced ethanol annually while reducing the plant’s CO₂ emissions by around 125,000 tons each year. It offers a tangible example of carbon moving from waste stream to value chain. “It’s about diversification,” says Alexander Fleischanderl. Tomorrow's steel plants may begin to look less like single-product factories and more like resource hubs.

Technological transitions look inevitable in hindsight. They rarely feel that way while they are happening. Fleischanderl compares the development to the evolution of the railway. Steam gave way to diesel. Diesel was followed by electrification and high-speed rail. Every transition depends largely on entrepreneurs willing to invest before ­markets, infrastructure, and regulation had caught up.

He believes the steel industry is approaching a similar moment. Different regions will inevitably follow different decarbonization pathways, but progress will belong to those willing to move first. Most of the underlying technologies already exist. What is still missing is the infrastructure and the ­markets that allow these technologies to scale.

That is why remaining technology agnostic matters so much, in his view. This transition will not be driven by a single breakthrough. Its success will depend on how well different technologies, industries, and value chains work together. Looking back a few decades from now, the question may no longer be whether captured CO₂ should become a resource. It may simply be how anyone ever thought of it as waste.