ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, recently introduced a program to offer certificates to customers that certify they have reduced their carbon footprint through the steelmaker’s own greenhouse-gas emission reductions. It’s the first such carbon-offset program by a major steelmaker. While it is focused on the Luxembourg-based company’s European customers, the certificates could be used by North American contractors and owners, as Canada already has a carbon tax and some U.S. entities require reporting.
The program, XCarb green steel certificates, allows buyers to purchase vouchers along with steel orders that can show an offset of Scope 3 carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Scope 3 emissions can come from anything in a company’s value chain, such as steel used in buildings, according to the GHG Protocol used by many governments to report emissions worldwide. The “green steel” will be produced by ArcelorMittal’s plants in Europe that use technologies such as hydrogen direct-reduced iron or electric-arc furnaces (EAFs), which use electricity that can be certified as coming from renewable sources such as wind turbines, to produce steel. Producing coking coal through biomass and capturing emissions for use in chemical production also will be used to certify the green steel.