Cutting carbon emissions from steelmaking, which accounts for about 7-9% of global CO2 emissions, is a key effort to fight climate change and the move comes as Kobe Steel aims to slash its CO2 emissions from its production process by 30%-40% by 2030 from 2013 levels.
"We want to boost our annual production and sales of low-carbon steel to one million tonnes in around 2030," Kobe Steel President Mitsugu Yamaguchi told reporters and analysts.
"We are getting many queries from broad industries including automobiles and construction," he said. He declined to say how much of a price premium it plans to seek.
Kobe Steel said last year that it had successfully demonstrated a new technology to trim CO2 emissions from blast furnace operations by a fifth, as compared to the conventional approach.
The new method uses a combination of its blast furnace operation technology and the direct reduction iron (DRI) technology of its U.S. unit, Midrex Technologies.
Charging a large amount of DRI in a briquette form into a blast furnace could slash the required amount of carbon fuel, such as coke, bringing about lower CO2 emissions.
Kobe Steel, which produces about 6 million tonnes of crude steel a year, plans to sell about 8,000 tonnes of low-carbon steel this financial year to March 2023.
The calculation method and results are certified by the DNV Business Assurance services UK Ltd, a third-party certification body, it said.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Kim Coghill)
