On September 14, 2021, Li Xinchuang, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chief Engineer of the Institute of Metallurgical Industry Planning, and a foreign academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, was invited to participate in the "2021 FMG Technical Forum" and gave a keynote speech on Lead the reshaping of the development pattern of China's steel industry".
Characteristics and Trends of the Development of China's Iron and Steel Industry
As the basic industry of the national economy, the iron and steel industry is an important indicator of a country's comprehensive national strength and degree of industrialization, and it is one of the hardest-core manufacturing industries. China's steel industry has five main characteristics that support the rapid development of the country's economy, is a typical technology-intensive industry, makes the world a better place, is the most globally competitive industry in China, and will lead the development of the world's steel industry for a long time.
So far, China’s steel industry has achieved “5G” competitiveness (good scale, good prices, good products, good brands, and good services), and it is already in the volume reduction phase, high-quality restructuring phase, and intermediate transition. Strengthening the three-stage superposition of the environmental protection stage is evolving to the low-carbon stage of the high-quality period. In the future, low carbon will lead China's steel industry to form a new balance of supply and demand, promote new technological progress, create a new industrial pattern, build a safe supply chain, and build a prosperous ecosystem.
Judging from the current situation of China's steel industry, the growth rate of crude steel production is narrowing, steel consumption continues to grow, steel trade shows new changes, iron ore prices continue to fall after rising, corporate profit levels continue to improve, and steel prices remain stable. Comprehensive consideration of internal and external factors such as macroeconomics, industrial policies, and the development of major downstream steel industries, it is expected that China's steel demand will remain high in the short term; however, under the guidance of the carbon peak and carbon neutral target, the medium and long-term steel demand will be slow Downward trend.
Opportunities and Challenges for China's Steel under the "Double Carbon" Goal
Under the general trend of global low-carbon development, whoever realizes the low-carbon transformation first will be able to take the initiative in the future competition. In recent years, more and more countries have successively proposed the "Green New Deal" to clarify low-carbon goals. The proposal of China's "3060" target is an important strategic decision to coordinate the overall international and domestic situations, and is a historic revolution in the production, consumption, technology, economy, and energy system. Compared with the previous two goals, China's Xindafeng goals and carbon neutral vision are more ambitious, demonstrating the responsibility of a major country, and fully embodies China's determination and confidence in low-carbon development.
At the national level, China attaches great importance to the implementation of the "dual carbon" goals and tasks, accelerates the implementation of various tasks in a solid and orderly manner, successively introduces low-carbon related policies, continuously improves the carbon emission trading mechanism, and officially launches the national carbon emission trading market online trade. In this context, China's steel industry, as an important area for implementing carbon emission reduction, has both opportunities and challenges. From the perspective of opportunities, low-carbon development will help the Chinese steel industry build a higher level of dynamic balance between supply and demand, optimize process structure, promote technological revolution, promote intelligent upgrading, accelerate deep collaboration among multiple industries, promote environmental protection governance, and deepen product portfolio Life cycle concept, and will help the industry's low-carbon standardization work. From the perspective of challenges, the low-carbon transition of China's steel industry has a tight time and heavy tasks, and must achieve peak and carbon reduction work within a relatively short period of time; most companies are in the initial stage of low-carbon development, and their basic capabilities such as technology and talent are weak; different companies The development level is uneven, and the low-carbon development level is different, and the carbon reduction space is different; the short process accounts for a large gap, the cost competitiveness of electric furnace steel is generally weak, and the optimization of the process flow structure still faces obstacles; and the coverage of green design products is insufficient.
Corresponding to the national "dual carbon" work node, the low-carbon transformation of China's steel industry has to go through four stages: peak carbon emissions, steady decline, substantial decline, and deep decarbonization. At this stage, China's steel industry has initially formulated a carbon peak and carbon reduction action plan. Focusing on key areas and tasks, China’s steel industry’s carbon peaking and carbon reduction path focuses on six aspects: first, promoting green layout; second, saving energy and improving energy efficiency; third, optimizing energy use and process structure; fourth, building a circular economy Industrial chain; fifth is to apply breakthrough low-carbon technologies; sixth is to do a good job in institutional construction and policy system support.
