Rio Tinto, China Baowu to jointly explore green steel projects

The world’s biggest iron ore miner and top steel producer are teaming up to collaborate on projects to cut carbon emissions in the highly pollutive steelmaking sector.

Rio Tinto Group and China Baowu Steel Group Corp have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore several initiatives including setting up green steel facilities in China and Western Australia, Rio said in a statement.

The MoU is an example of miners working with their customers as the steel sector — one of the biggest sources of global emissions — tries to decarbonise. Beijing has pledged that China’s steel industry will reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, and net zero by 2060.

Steelmakers are at the start of a decades-long shift away from coal-fueled blast furnaces that dominate the industry. A major hurdle for Australian miners like Rio is that their ore may not be suitable for plants that depend on hydrogen rather than coal.

“This MoU aims to address one of the biggest challenges faced by the industry – developing a low-carbon pathway for low-to-medium grade iron ores, which account for the vast majority of global iron ore supply,” Rio Chief Commercial Officer Alf Barrios said in the statement.

Rio and Baowu agreed to explore a number of projects together, including:

• A pilot direct-reduced-iron plant in China
• Better technology for making high-grade iron ore pellets from Australian ores
• Further developing Baowu’s technology for reducing blast-furnace emissions
• Studying a potential low-carbon iron plant in Western Australia

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