Australia is the world’s number one exporter of both iron ore and metallurgical coal, the key ingredients of traditional steel making. Together, these materials make up a very large part of Australia’s export income.

But as the world moves towards net-zero emissions by 2050, the conventional way of making steel, using coal to power a blast furnace, will come under question.

Iron and steel production, in total, account for close to 7% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This is incompatible with a net-zero world economy, where residual emissions would need to be compensated through carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere. The mature technology of coal-fired blast furnaces currently dominates the steel industry, generating 90% of its emissions.

For years, decarbonising steel production has been seen as particularly challenging. But now, alternatives to the centuries-old practice of using coal to produce iron and steel are emerging. Researchers have been working on a number of new pathways to make steel with little or no emissions. The most promising process relying on the use of hydrogen.

Our new research shows the steel industry can develop and implement green steel production processes to contribute to the great decarbonisation effort needed. For Australia, this presents an enormous new opportunity to future-proof and expand our steel industry as the world acts on climate change.

How can we produce green steel?

To eliminate emissions from this sector, several things are needed. First, we must use steel efficiently in well-designed structures. Second, we must recover and recycle steel after use. Thirdly, we must find the best and most scalable processes to reduce and eventually eliminate the emissions produced when making new steel.

In Australia, there have been several recent efforts to improve steel production processes. Rio Tinto developed the HIsarna technology, which can cut emissions by up to 80% – as long as the carbon is captured and stored. Other emission reduction technologies have also been developed here, such as dry slag granulation, polymer injection technology and charcoal-based reduction. However these technologies cannot scale up to decarbonise all steel produced globally.

Are there other options? Yes. We’re beginning to see real world trials of advanced green steel technologies which can make emissions-free steel.

These techniques rely on hydrogen to strip oxygen molecules from iron ore to produce metallic iron. Frontrunners include hydrogen shaft furnaces like HYBRIT and fluidised-bed systems such as HYFOR. Both of these processes are undergoing testing in Europe.

We could even see the direct electrolysis of steel, using electric currents to strip off the oxygen, and avoid the need for hydrogen.

How quickly do we need green steel?

Australia has recently pledged a 2050 net-zero target.
Over the last two years, many of Australia’s major trading partners also made ambitious emission reduction pledges, including major iron ore buyers China, Japan and South Korea.

So how can the steel industry help? We examine five different decarbonisation scenarios in our recent paper. We found the only scenario compatible with keeping global warming to under 2℃ includes the aggressive development and adoption of green steel technologies.

This would mean ending the use of blast furnaces by 2060, maximising recycling of steel, as well as some transitional use of gas in direct-reduced iron making. Under this zero-carbon scenario, green steel technologies would take over by 2060.

In creating our scenarios, we relied only on existing technologies, rather than promising but still unproven technologies such as direct air capture and storage of carbon dioxide.

Here’s how Australia could benefit

Australia need not lose from the transition away from metallurgical coal.

More than 95% of all our iron ore comes from Western Australia’s Pilbara region, which also happens to have excellent solar resources. Our modelling suggests we could produce electricity from solar panels almost a third cheaper than some overseas industrial hubs.

So Australia could be well positioned to become a green steel producer, adding significant value to our exports.

The Pilbara could become a region where iron ore is mined, smelted into iron and possibly into steel without producing carbon dioxide, and shipped overseas. We could export intermediate products, such as pellets or hot-briquetted iron, or perhaps even finished steel.

Even if no green steel industrial operations develop in Australia, we will come up against a world shifting away from metallurgical coal.

Not only that, but we’ll have to make sure future green steel technologies can use Australian ores, or we risk losing market share. That’s because other major exporters have iron ores with different purity and chemistry, and it’s not clear yet how green steel processes will drive demand for different ores. It looks likely that low emissions steel will require high grade ore, but this is still an evolving area of research.

Change is coming, like it or not. We need good policies in place now to ensure Australia can keep its major role in the global iron and steel supply chain.

We’ll need local research and development, international partnerships with leading technology producing and steel-consuming nations and government backing for the major investments required to establish a green iron or steel industry in Australia.

The world is changing rapidly. If we want to grasp the major opportunity presented by green steel, we must act now to explore the benefits of having iron ore mines, solar resources and ports close to each other.

John Pye, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, ANU, Australian National University; Alireza Rahbari, Research fellow, School of Engineering, ANU, Australian National University; Emma Aisbett, Fellow, Australian National University; Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University, and Zsuzsanna Csereklyei, Senior Lecturer in Economics, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MAROUA, Far North Region, Jan 14 2015 (IPS) – “I’d quit my job before going to work in a place like that.” That is how a primary school teacher responded when IPS asked him why he had not accepted a job in Cameroon’s Far North region.

James Ngoran is not the only teacher who has refused to move to the embattled area bordering Nigeria where Boko Haram has been massing and launching lightning strike attacks on the isolated region.

“Many teachers posted or transferred to the Far North Region simply don’t take up their posts. They are all afraid for their lives,” Wilson Ngam, an official of the Far North Regional Delegation for Basic Education, tells IPS. He said over 200 trained teachers refused to take up their posts in the region in 2014.

Raids by the Boko Haram insurgents in the Far North Region have created a cycle of fear and uncertainty, making teachers posted here balk at their responsibility, and forcing those on the ground to bribe their way out of “the zone of death.”

Last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened Cameroon in a video message on YouTube, warning that the same fate would befall the country as neighbouring Nigeria. He addressed his message directly to Cameroonian President Paul Biya after repeated fighting between militants and troops in the Far North.

Shekau was reported killed in September by Cameroonian troops – a report that later turned out to be untrue.

As the Nigerian sect intensifies attacks on Cameroonian territory, government has been forced to close numerous schools. According to Mounouna Fotso, a senior official in the Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education, over 130 schools have already been shut down.

Most of the schools are found in the Mayo-Tsanaga, Mayo-Sava and Logone and Chari Divisions-all areas which share a long border with Nigeria, and where the terrorists have continued to launch attacks.

“Government had to temporarily close the schools and relocate the students and teachers. The lives of thousands of students and pupils have been on the line as Boko Haram continues to attack. We can’t put the lives of children at risk,” Fotso said.

“We are losing students each time there is an attack on a village even if it is several kilometres from here,” Christophe Barbah, a schoolmaster in the Far North Region’s Kolofata area, said in a press interview.

The closure of schools and the psychological trauma experienced by teachers and students raises concerns that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on education will be missed in Cameroon’s Far North Region.

Although both government and civil society agree that universal primary education could attained by the end of this year in the country’s south, the 49 percent school enrolment rate in the Far North Region, compared to the national average of 83 percent, according to UNICEF, means a lot of work still needs to be done here.

Mahamat Abba, a resident of Fotocol whose four children used to attend one of the three government schools there, has fled with his entire family to Kouseri on the border with Chad.

“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. But starting life afresh here is a nightmare, having abandoned everything,” he told IPS.

Alhadji Abakoura, a resident of Amchidé, adds that the area has virtually become a ghost town. “The town had six primary schools and a nursery school. They have all been closed down.”

Overcrowded schools

As students, teachers and parents relocate to safer grounds, pressure is mounting on schools, which have to absorb the additional students with no additional funds.

According to UNICEF figures for Cameroon, school participation for boys topped 90 percent in 2013, while girls lagged behind at 85 percent or less. However, participation has been much lower in the extreme northern region.

According to the Institut National de la Statistique du Cameroon, literacy is below 40 percent in the Far North, 40 to 50 percent in the North, and 60-70 percent in the central north state of Adamawa. The Millennium Development Goal is full primary schooling for both sexes by 2015.

“Many of us are forced to follow lectures from classroom windows since there is practically very limited sitting space inside,” Ahmadou Saidou, a student of Government Secondary School Maroua, tells IPS. He had escaped from Amchidé where a September attack killed two students and a teacher.

Ahmadou said the benches on which three students once sat are now used by double that number.

“It’s an issue of great concern,” Mahamat Ahamat, the regional delegate for basic education, tells IPS.

“In normal circumstances, each classroom should contain a maximum of 60 students. But we are now in a situation where a single classroom hosts over one hundred and thirty students,” he said. “We are redeploying teachers who flee risk zones…we are getting them over to schools where students are fleeing to.

“These attacks are really slowing things down,’ Mahamat said.

Government response to the crisis

The Nigerian-based sect Boko Haram has intensified attacks on Cameroon in recent years, killing both civilians and military personnel and kidnapping nationals and expatriates in exchange for ransoms.

To respond to the crisis, Cameroon has come up with military and legal reforms. A new military region was set up in the country’s Far North Region. According to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, “The creation of the 4th Military Region is meant to bring the military closer to the theatre of threats, and to boost the operational means in both human and material resources.”

Military equipment has been supplied by the U.S., Germany and Israel, according to press reports.

Mebe Ngo’oo said Cameroon will recruit 20,000 soldiers over the next two years to step up the fight against the terrorists. Besides the military option, Cameroon has also come up with a legal framework to streamline the fight against terrorism. An anti-terrorism law was passed by Parliament in December, punishing all those guilty of terrorist acts by death.

But opposition political leaders, civil society activists and church leaders have criticised it as anti-democratic and fear it is actually intended to curtail civil liberties.

Edited by Lisa Vives

Licensed from Inter Press Service

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