SINGAPORE — As much as 303 million metric tons per year of new high-emitting blast furnace capacity is under development, especially in major steel producers India and China, new research showed, suggesting it will still make up the vast majority of production by 2030.
Steel production is responsible for about 11 percent of total climate warming greenhouse gas emissions, with global steel demand set to exceed 2 billion tons by 2030, the US-based Global Energy Monitor think tank said.
While cleaner electric arc furnace technology is expected to rise 24 percent by then, blast furnace capacity is set to rise 7 percent and account for 64 percent of total global output, GEM said.
The think tank warned that the steps taken by India, which accounts for 57 percent of all new coal-based blast furnace capacity under development, will be pivotal in “greening one of the world’s most polluting industries”.
“India is now the bellwether of global steel decarbonisation,” Astrid Grigsby-Schulte, one of the report’s authors, said in a statement.
The actions of its steel industry will determine how close the sector gets to the International Energy Agency’s target of switching 38 percent of furnaces to electric arc by 2030.
China, the world’s biggest steel producer, built around 21 million tons of new blast furnace capacity last year, while India added another 10 million tons, GEM data showed.
China’s crude steel output in April slid 7 percent from March, defying analysts’ expectations of a rise against the backdrop of healthy profits and robust exports, but production was still reasonably high.
The world’s largest steel producer made 86.02 million metric tons of crude steel last month, flat with April a year ago and down from 92.84 million tons in March, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday.
The April volume suggested average daily output of about 2.87 million tons, versus 2.99 million tons in March and 2.86 million tons in April 2024, according to Reuters calculations based on the data.
Around 56 percent of steelmakers were operating at a profit in April, compared to 53 percent in March, a survey from consultancy Mysteel showed.
Analysts said decent demand in China and robust exports helped support output last month.
Steel mills want to ratchet up production, especially after having suffered severe losses in the past two years when demand was battered by a protracted property downturn, according to analysts. That will likely buoy output in May, they added.
In the first four months of 2025, China manufactured a total of 345.35 million tons of crude steel, up 0.4 percent year on year, despite Beijing unveiling plans in March to restructure the giant steel sector via output cuts. Beijing has not disclosed essential details including the timing and scale of the output.
