Shades of green Shades of green

Amid a rampant increase in the use of the term ‘green steel’, issues are arising from its lacking critical definition, widening application in global contexts, and amplified impacts upon an industry under pressure to decarbonize.

By Catherine Hill*

WHAT makes steel ‘green’? The term is still in its infancy, in the context of climate change and heavy industry. Global warming didn’t reach wider public discussion until the late 1980s, with the hottest summer on record, beating out the drought of 1955. ‘’At least we accomplished something,’’ said Geoff O’Toole, a meteorologist with the Central Weather Service in a 1988 issue of the Chicago Tribune. We’ve not known for long that the Earth has been exhausted from decades of unconscious, and now conscious abuse – but with roughly 7% of carbon emissions today generated from steel production, it’s a fact that has required rapid adjustment to prevent disaster. Companies are now obliged to provide their shareholders with ‘green stories’, says Alexander Fleischanderl, head of green steel at Primetals Technologies, adding that ‘the whole ESG topic is driving the direction toward net zero’. What has yet to be addressed, however, is the linguistic gaps that are left in the nascent use of such terms, that has come prior to their explicit definition. If there is no specific criteria for ‘green steel’, then companies are left with anarchic sub-spaces of marketing, in which grey can appear green, community and workforce complaints can be glossed over with vague sustainability claims, and decarbonization evolves into what Annie Heaton, CEO of certification company ResponsibleSteel refers to as a ‘commercial and competitive landscape’. ‘‘I think the green transformation is going to be hugely important’’, said Kemel Sarac, general manager of Turkish steelmaker Yucel Boru, at the 2022 Steel Orbis conference, ‘’and I’m not just talking about green of the trees, I’m talking about green of the dollars.’’ The financial incentive driven by the need to provide ‘green stories’ has created a hastiness in applying such terms, before their meaning has been fully assessed –making what should be critical evidence of action, ambiguous, and opaque. Via the emergence, and now ubiquitous quality of sustainability terminology, the opportunity has arisen for manipulation, profit, and even scapegoating – with all its speakers standing to benefit, without much, if any substantiation.

In 2021, a report by public health agency RIVM found that dust emissions from the steel industry in North Holland’s IJMond region contained a ‘damaging amount of substances and metals that can cause cancer’, with samples taken closest to a steel plant owned by Tata Steel showing the highest concentrations. According to Dutch emission authorities, Tata’s steelworks is one of the largest CO2 emitters in the Netherlands. On the company’s website today reads the following marketing slogan; ‘We are passionate about preserving our planet and taking care of our communities…. we do everything we can to be a steel producer that is responsible in all respects.’ In 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Brazilian mining company and one of the world’s largest iron ore producers, Vale S.A., with making false and misleading claims about the safety of its dams prior to the January 2019 collapse of its Brumadinho dam. The collapse killed 270 people, caused ‘immeasurable environmental and social harm’, and according to the SEC’s complaint, was a result of the company manipulating multiple dam safety audits, obtaining numerous fraudulent stability certificates, and regularly misleading local governments, communities, and investors about the dam’s safety. In 2020, mining company Rio Tinto blew up ancient aboriginal caves at Juukan Gorge, in Western Australia, later telling a senate inquiry that it proceeded with detonation despite knowing one of the shelters was of ‘the highest archaeological significance in Australia’, in order to access lucrative volumes of high-grade ore. These crises, bred from the production of steel, offer commentary on the tension between sustainable language, and responsible actions; real accounts of how language can be manipulated to detract from, or even rewrite the truth. Professional services brand PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently surveyed 729 companies within sectors such as transport, mining, and industrial products, regarding sustainable development goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed by the UN to serve as a ‘shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’. The survey demonstrated that although half of the companies acknowledged, or had identified priority SDGs, only about one-quarter disclosed meaningful targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) or mentioned SDGs as part of their business strategy. Additionally, authors of the report found that ‘reporting could be used to camouflage business-as-usual by applying SDG-related sustainability rhetoric’– making corporate involvement in SGDs largely ‘symbolic’, rather than substantive. With many of the companies surveyed relating to steel production, a nefarious connection is established – between the use of language to distort and imply a reality that has yet to exist. The European steel association (EUROFER) listed one of the most pressing issues within the industry as the lack of a ‘consistent approach to assessing recycling performance…too often products claim to be ‘fully recyclable whereas the reality of end-of-life is completely different’. In reality, however, substantiating claims of sustainability are more complex than exposing figures – according to Fleischanderl. When companies calculate and publish their carbon footprint, the exclusion of Scope 3 emissions, which can be interpreted as misrepresentation, is not ‘necessarily due to a lack of transparency… but the fact that Scope 3 is really difficult for some companies to calculate, especially in terms of stainless steel where the ferro-alloys contribute significantly to Scope 3; therefore it’s relevant where this is purchased from’. However, this doesn’t account for the continued use of terminology that remains to be evidenced – if the figures are incomplete, how can a company reliably quantify its sustainability?

In an effort to acknowledge this conflict between implication and actuality, producers are now engaging in what John Brett, CEO of ArcelorMitttal North America refers to as a ‘standards race’; with organizations and standards such as ResponsibleSteel, First Mover’s Coalition, and the Steel Climate Standard touting protocols of labelling and certifying ‘green’ steel. However, far from reaching an aligned vision of a decarbonized future, the standards have raised questions over what types of production the labelling should include; with Leon Topalian, CEO of Nucor, stating that the sliding scale approach offered by organizations including ResponsibleSteel, which features one standard for steel made from traditional production processes and another for steel made from circular processes such as using electric-arc furnaces, seeks to ‘dump problems on [American] shores by promoting a dirty standard’, and Philip K. Bell, president of the Steel Manufacturers Association referring to the approach as a form of ‘greenwashing’. The debate in standardization makes murky what is already a deeply complex topic; in the attempt to reconcile language, hierarchies are formed, with steel companies often investing in whichever standard offers them the most significant advantage. Heaton offers a single statement to the critics of ResponsibleSteel; that ‘greening steel is a more helpful concept than green steel’. ‘’It provokes a level of maturity in the conversation,’’ Heaton adds, saying that standards need to reward ‘shades of green’, in order to incentivize progress. ‘’Language is a critical part of this, it is perilous, and can be misused. Rather than go into battle, we call on all stakeholders to collaborate on how we can align’’. Brett, as a member of ResponsibleSteel, echoes Heaton’s statements; ‘we believe that standards should incentivize all forms of steelmaking through technology shifts’. However, ArcelorMittal’s involvement in both low emissions projects, and ‘some of the most emissions-intensive, coal-based steelmaking plants’ raises questions over its intentions, says Caitlin Swalec, programme director at

Global Energy Monitor, stating; ‘‘we have to question whether these companies are seriously pursuing a 1.5 degree future or simply hedging their bets on industrial decarbonization and our climate future.’’ There is a divide between belief in capacity – how much should companies be held to account for their current actions, and how do we then accommodate, and reward their progress? This is not a question that can be answered by the existence of multiple diversified standards – alignment is crucial and demands a wide-reaching debate.

It’s not just about the fight over ‘green’, however – impacts of language draw on wider contexts of race, and victimhood; perpetuated phrases of China being a ‘dirty villain’ of the industry are often offered as a way to bolster the outward success of other regions’ decarbonization efforts. Relying on the mutable definition of ‘green’ production, concretized statements are made, which reduce to an ‘us versus them’ mentality centred around ownership of terminology which is as volatile as the market in which it attempts to function. The reality is that Chinese citizens produce less than half the CO2 per person than people in the US, Australia, or Canada, with Maureen A. Huebel, an Australian academic, commenting that: “On a per capita basis, Australia’s carbon footprint, including exports, is nine times higher than China’s”. There’s no denying that China’s carbon footprint is substantial, with the coal industry representing around threequarters of emissions, but the significance of other countries’ reliance on China for manufacturing is an often-overlooked factor, with half the world’s supply of steel being manufactured in China. The ongoing narrative of China as the sinner of the industry is tied into sinophobic discourses, evolved from

What Political Writer

Brendan O’Neill described as a ‘western fear of the supposed limitless hordes of Chinese overrunning white countries’. Mass industrialization in China took place decades after its Western counterparts, meaning that its decarbonization timeline can bear little comparison to western efforts. That is not to say China does not hold the onus to enforce stringent agendas to lower emissions – but the oversimplification of its identity as an instinctual environmental offender merely reinforces patterns of western reaction to crisis; as stated by O’Neill; “[P]eriodic transformations in dominant Western images [the East], from positive to negative and back again, indicate the tremendous malleability of perceptions of the ‘other’ in response to specific historical circumstances, and especially in response to circumstances in Western nations themselves.” In a time of crisis, it is all too familiar to turn to a tangible source of blame. Environmental responsibility, however, carries beyond regional boundaries, and will not be distracted by linguistic margins of ‘clean’, and ‘dirty’; ‘green’, or ‘grey’, but by a globalized transformation, enforced by aligned agendas.

It is unlikely that the term ‘green steel’ will lose any traction in the next few decades; it is an easily marketable, and commodified recolouring of an industry that faces significant attention in its decarbonization targets. However, with ‘increasing numbers of steelmakers committing to reaching net zero by 2050, details on how these targets are to be achieved [remain] vague, and often rely on unproven technology’, says Simon Nicholas, energy finance analyst at IEFA – indeed, if the industry is supposedly ‘green’ by 2050, what meaning will this hold? Standardization of green steel is inevitably due to become a defining force, creating further debate in terms of what is included, and what is left behind. Market priorities are undergoing a huge shift, as companies must justify production in terms of its sustainability; it’s no longer a fight for quantity, but for quality – as new levels of environmental grading will prevent the justification of unnecessary impacts. What remains to be seen is what middle ground will be reached – with inevitable compromise due to take place.

‘Green steel’ initially offers a simple, compound future – but the complexity of industrial decarbonization asserts a critical gap; there are, in fact, many shades of green. �