Global Climate Change Science News

[JimC]

Eventually, green hydrogen could replace carbon as a reducing agent in the smelting of iron ore. Probably a fair way off, though...

[macdoc]

More likely electric blast furnaces - green hydrogen are to do in scale and hard to transport.

Significant shift’ away from coal as most new steelmaking is now electric
18.07.24

https://www.carbonbrief.org/significant ... w-electric

[JimC]

Electric arc furnaces are for processing iron into steel, and sure, they can and should be done using renewable electricity. However, iron ore is mostly iron oxide. To remove the oxygen atoms, you need a reducing agent to grab the oxygen. Presently, the agent is the carbon in coking coal, with the oxygen emerging as carbon dioxide. But, the chemistry works just as well if hydrogen is the reducing agent, with the oxygen removed as H2O...

[Brian Peacock]

The UKs last blast furnace was taken into public ownership last year. The private consortium who owned it threatened to turn it off if the govt didn't clear its debts, most of which were generated by borrowing on the asset to pay dividends. When you turn a blast furnace of you effectively kill it.

Building new arc furnaces to recycle the huge amount of scrap steel we export (and then reimport as products) could narrow what analysts call the 'steel gap' and help make growing domestic renewable energy infrastructure cheaper and more secure.

Taxpayer-owned steel faces ticking clock to capture Britain's green steel boom

...
New research from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), drawing on analysis conducted by CBI Economics, finds the UK already generates enough scrap steel to support a significant expansion of domestic steelmaking, but currently exports around 75% (8 million tonnes) of that scrap steel each year because it lacks sufficient recycling capacity.

Much of that material is exported overseas to countries such as Türkiye, where electric arc furnaces recycle it into new steel, before some finished steel products are sold back into the UK – taking potential jobs, investment and economic activity with them.

...

UK steel demand is projected to grow by 54% from 9.1 million tonnes in 2025 to 14 million tonnes by 2050, driven by housebuilding, offshore wind deployment, electricity network upgrades and rising demand from automotive manufacturers seeking low-carbon steel. The next few years are a key time for growth, with steel demand from electricity infrastructure alone projected to grow by around 12% per year, on average, to 2050...

[Brian Peacock]

Why would nations want to delay or subvert the publication of the IPCC's Assessment Reports I wonder - AR's don't prescribe policy, they synthesize the most reliable and up-to-date data and research and offer broad and generally conservative assessments (some might argue too conservative) that are designed to inform policy?

IPCC is under pressure to delay publication of key global climate report

Scientists are coming under pressure from some petro-states and major developing countries to delay publication of a key global report on the climate, despite pleas from vulnerable countries worried that postponement could spell disaster for them.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists, is meeting this week in Addis Ababa to discuss its seventh assessment report, a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the climate crisis.

The report, known as AR7, was scheduled to appear in 2028 in time for deliberations at the UN climate summit, Cop33, late that year. Cop33 is scheduled to critique governments’ actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement target of limiting temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

But a group of countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia and including India and China, is pressing for publication of the report to be pushed back to 2029.

They argue this is necessary in order to allow developing countries to have more input into the scientific findings. Climate science has been dominated for three decades by countries and blocs including the EU, the UK and the US, though under Donald Trump’s presidency in the last of these it has has been severely curtailed...

I guess if you stick your fingers in your ears you won't hear the fire alarms - and you can go about your business as if nothing is happening.

[Brian Peacock]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suspended an important meeting on Friday in Addis Ababa without setting out a firm timetable for its next report. The world’s governments are due to meet in less than a month for the Cop31 climate summit, and this leaves the future of scientific advice to governments on the climate in doubt...

guardian.com

[pErvinalia]

We're fucked.

FIFY.

[Svartalf]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-07/ ... /107233650

A landmark ruling in the High Court has found planning authorities are required to consider the emissions caused by burning fossil fuels overseas when approving projects.

Three of the five judges found in favour of a Hunter Valley residents' group, which halted the Mount Pleasant mine expansion last year in the New South Wales Court of Appeal.

The High Court case centred around the open-cut coalmine near Muswellbrook, which was approved for expansion by NSW planning authorities in 2022, before being halted through the community-led court battle last year.

I assume Mount Pleasant is a big coal extraction site?

[Svartalf]

The UKs last blast furnace was taken into public ownership last year. The private consortium who owned it threatened to turn it off if the govt didn't clear its debts, most of which were generated by borrowing on the asset to pay dividends. When you turn a blast furnace off you effectively kill it.

Building new arc furnaces to recycle the huge amount of scrap steel we export (and then reimport as products) could narrow what analysts call the 'steel gap' and help make growing domestic renewable energy infrastructure cheaper and more secure.

Taxpayer-owned steel faces ticking clock to capture Britain's green steel boom

...
New research from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), drawing on analysis conducted by CBI Economics, finds the UK already generates enough scrap steel to support a significant expansion of domestic steelmaking, but currently exports around 75% (8 million tonnes) of that scrap steel each year because it lacks sufficient recycling capacity.

Much of that material is exported overseas to countries such as Türkiye, where electric arc furnaces recycle it into new steel, before some finished steel products are sold back into the UK – taking potential jobs, investment and economic activity with them.

...

UK steel demand is projected to grow by 54% from 9.1 million tonnes in 2025 to 14 million tonnes by 2050, driven by housebuilding, offshore wind deployment, electricity network upgrades and rising demand from automotive manufacturers seeking low-carbon steel. The next few years are a key time for growth, with steel demand from electricity infrastructure alone projected to grow by around 12% per year, on average, to 2050...

once turned off, a blast furnace can't be turned back on? (or at what cost?)

[pErvinalia]

It requires really big BBQ firestarters. There's a shortage at the moment.

[Tero]

Weeks to months
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/art ... -ngtshmf53

[pErvinalia]

Weeks to months to what?

[Brian Peacock]

Time.