On April 26, 2023, ahead of the announcement of its first-quarter earnings, Hyundai Steel unveiled its carbon neutral roadmap for sustainable corporate management, which comes in response to growing global concerns related to climate change.
President & CEO An Tong-il personally presented the roadmap using a pre-recorded video, noting that advanced countries around the world are focusing on protecting their industries and gaining a competitive edge in connection with climate change. He asserted, “Companies that cannot respond effectively to climate change will inevitable decline, and to avoid this, Hyundai Steel will make every effort to stand at the forefront of the industry as an eco-friendly steel company.”
Hyundai Steel plans to first establish an “Electric Arc Furnace – Blast Furnace” Combined Process, which is a phased approach to producing low carbon advanced automotive steel products while maintaining the quality of existing blast furnace products. The first phase involves incorporating pre-melting low carbon molten steel, produced using existing electric arc furnaces, into the blast furnace process. As part of the second phase, the company plans to build new electric arc furnaces to manufacture low carbon products, aiming to achieve a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
The new electric arc furnaces will apply “Hy-Cube” technology, a low carbon production system developed using the company’s own technologies. Hy-Cube is a core technology that minimizes carbon emissions using scrap metal, carbon neutral molten iron from blast furnaces, and hydrogen-based DRI, into the new electric arc furnace to produce high-quality flat products.
Hyundai Steel has already manufactured and supplied automotive steel sheets using electric arc furnaces, and in October 2022, it succeeded in test-producing the world’s first 1.0 GPa-class, low carbon high-quality flat products using an electric arc furnace.
Hyundai Steel branded the low carbon steel produced in this way as “HyECOsteel,” which will be supplied to customers around the world.
Hyundai Steel will continue to dedicate itself to developing innovative carbon neutral technologies to achieve net-zero by 2050, keeping in line with Korea’s nationally determined contribution (NDC).
▼View the Hyundai Steel Carbon Neutral Roadmap Video
