Companies & Markets

China's steel champion nods to Xi with 2050 carbon-zero vow

Published Mon, Jan 25, 2021 · 05:46 PM

[SHANGHAI] China Baowu Steel Group, the top global producer, pledged to go carbon neutral by 2050, echoing a push by President Xi Jinping to shift China's economy away from fossil fuels in coming decades.

The group expects emissions to peak by 2023, before gradually reducing its carbon footprint to zero by the middle of the decade, Chairman Chen Derong told a company meeting on Wednesday, according to Baowu's official WeChat account.

The vow from China's top steel mill highlights how Mr Xi's surprise carbon-zero goal unveiled last year is being echoed across major industries and companies. Baowu is a state-owned champion in an industry that accounts for 15 per cent of China's carbon gases, according to the company's numbers.

"While the steel industry has made great effort in recent years and emissions have decreased, the pressure to reduce further still exists because of the industry's large-scale nature and technical processes," Baowu said.

Steelmakers from Japan to Europe are looking at ways of cutting carbon emissions to meet more hawkish government targets on emissions. The most radical reductions would be achieved by using hydrogen instead of coal in the steelmaking process.

Baowu said that it's aiming, by 2025, to have the technical ability to reduce emissions by 30 per cent and pledged to achieve that threshold by 2035. It suggested creating a global alliance on research into low-carbon steelmaking.