Green iron means iron ore in the red

Thursday 25 July 2024

IEEFA with the note.

Iron ore’s demand profile set to change in response to steel decarbonisation

The current pipeline of announced low-carbon steel projects sees nearly 100Mt of new DRI capacity coming online by 2030 (Figure 1). China already has two commercial-scale DRI-based steel plants up and running. DRI plants can run on green hydrogen rather than gas to produce truly low-emissions iron and steel, but they currently require a higher grade of iron ore than the great majority of Australian production.

Figure 1: 2030 pipeline of announced low-carbon steelmaking projects (by deployment year)

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.