Carbon reduction in the steel industry

The construction of carbon emission accounting system in steel industry needs to increase investment. According to the requirements of the 14th Five-Year Plan, market-based trading of carbon emission rights should be promoted. The investment in the construction of carbon market is not only the investment in the construction of carbon emission system, but also the investment in the construction of various supporting measures within structural steel pipe manufacturers. The construction of carbon emission accounting system in iron and steel industry requires a large amount of human, financial and material input.

The cost of carbon emissions from steel production is rising. Based on the pilot carbon emission quota spot trading market in the past few years, the general trend of most trading markets is that the total amount of trading is on the rise, and the average steel pipe prices of trading is on the rise. This indicates that the carbon emissions trading costs of enterprises that do not meet the standards will gradually increase. According to the trading data published by Guangzhou Carbon Emission Exchange, the annual trading volume of 2015 was 113,992 million yuan, far lower than that of 2020, 83,454.15 million yuan, and the average trading price of 25.58 yuan/ton in 2020 was higher than that of 16.38 yuan/ton in 2015. According to the trading data of the national carbon market released by Shanghai Environment Exchange, the monthly trading volume of listed agreements in the first month of the opening of the market was 5.052 million tons, the highest transaction price was 61.07 yuan/ton, and the average monthly transaction price was 51.86 yuan/ton, much higher than the trading price in the pilot period. In addition, the average closing price for the whole of 2018 was 17.45 euros/ton and 24.91 euros/ton for the whole of 2019, according to EU carbon quota trading data. As can be seen from the situation of carbon trading in Chinese and European Union, the price of round steel tube for sale is increasing continuously, and the cost of carbon emission in substandard enterprises is increasing constantly.

The green development of iron and steel logistics needs a lot of capital investment. Green logistics should be realized by changing the mode of transportation, developing multimodal transportation, developing smart transportation and other means. However, the transformation of related modes of transportation, infrastructure construction and logistics informatization construction all require a large amount of capital investment. In the short term, it will bring a large increase in costs, but in the long term, it will reduce the carbon emissions and improve the logistics efficiency of the steel supply chain, thus reducing the logistics costs of the rectangular steel tube industry. In order to achieve the goal of “double carbon”, the iron and steel industry should actively explore ways to reduce cost and increase efficiency. The resource and environmental costs of green development will be included in the cost accounting system. To achieve green management and reduce energy intensity and carbon emissions, it needs to pay a lot of resource and environmental costs.