Hyundai Steel will invest an additional USD 445 million toward reducing the steelworks’ greenhouse gas emissions and improving the environment over five years starting next year.
Together with the USD 460 million invested from 2016 to the present year, the company will have invested a total of USD 905 million toward improving the environment over the space of just a decade.
On November 29, Hyundai Steel President & CEO Ahn Tong-il and Dangjin Mayor Kim Hong-jang signed an agreement at Dangjin City Hall pledging mutual cooperation toward environmental improvement and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the steelworks. Under the agreement, Hyundai Steel will reduce its environmental footprint through the following approaches: employing waste heat recovery techniques to reduce greenhouse gases, reducing fuel consumption, improving energy efficiency, installing equipment for treatment of pollutants, making improvements to pollution-preventing facilities and equipment, and increasing in-facility recycling and in-house processing of byproducts.
Hyundai Steel will faithfully fulfill this agreement, by a range of various improvements to the steelworks environment by 2025. First, a coke dry quenching (CDQ1) facility will be installed by 2025 to recover the waste heat generated when cooling down coke. This waste heat will be used to produce steam and electricity, thereby helping to reduce greenhouse gases. The facility is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 500,000 tons per year. Other aspects of the company’s multi-faceted approach to improving the environment include installation of alternative maritime power (AMP2) supplies for vessels berthed at port, and the adoption of other atmospheric pollutant-reducing apparatuses and systems.
The early completion of improvement works on Sinter Plant 3 in July marked the completion of works to turn improve scrubber equipment at all of the company’s sinter plants. Projected atmospheric pollutant emissions this year stand at 8,000 tons, some 46% less than the 14,978 tons emitted in 2014 when the existing scrubber equipment began malfunctioning.
“Gone is the era when a corporation’s only role in society was for economic development,” said CEO Ahn Tong-Il. “Hyundai Steel will go beyond simple compliance with environmental regulations, adopting a preemptive response by implementing more advanced environmental systems.” In the future, Hyundai Steel plans to transparently disclose all environmental improvement data, and aims to acquire additional Environmental Product Declaration (EPD3) certification to produce environmentally friendly products. Given the ever-increasing social demand for transparency regarding the environmental performance of products (including greenhouse gas emissions), it is expected that the company’s efforts to acquire EPD certification for more products will be key in meeting this demand. The EPD takes into account not only greenhouse gas emissions caused during production, but also the utilization of process byproducts.
1) CDQ (Coke Dry Quenching)
A type of dry quenching plant which internally circulates cooling gas and reuses the same during steam processes, reducing the impact of moisture while using zero fuel and not discharging odors or atmospheric pollutants
2) AMP (Alternative Maritime Power)
Supplies electricity to berthed ships to prevent the atmospheric pollution caused by unnecessary idling
3) EPD (Environmental Product Declaration)
An index under which the environmental impact of a product’s entire life cycle, from harvesting of raw material to production, distribution, usage and disposal, is quantitatively indicated and disclosed, allowing consumers to compare and select environmentally friendly products