Environmental impacts

For the third consecutive year, ArcelorMittal has won the Steelie Award for excellence in sustainability. Announced at the World Steel Association’s annual dinner in Monterrey, Mexico, the nod distinguishes the company’s industry leadership on sustainability amid the growing pressure steel companies are facing to outline their approach to reducing carbon emissions.

A commitment to reduce emissions

The award was given in recognition of the company’s publication of the steel sector’s first Climate Action report in May 2019. The report set out the three pathways the company believes can lead to deep decarbonisation of steelmaking, the various low-emissions technologies the company is trialling, and the public policy required to make low-emissions steel a reality. It also confirms ArcelorMittal’s commitments to the objectives of the Paris Agreement and outlines the company’s ambition to significantly reduce emissions across the group, including reaching carbon neutrality in Europe by 2050.

A unanimous win

Accepting the Steelie, Brian Aranha, executive vice president, head of strategy, CTO, R&D, CCM, global automotive, communications and corporate responsibility said:
 
“I am delighted to be able to collect this award for the third year in a row, particularly as I am told that the jury voted unanimously that ArcelorMittal should win it. We are immensely proud of the forward-thinking resource our people have put together to build stakeholder understanding of what a transition to a low-carbon steel industry means in practice. Although the report does not have all the answers, it is prompting some very important conversations with our stakeholders across the steel industry and beyond. Having these conversations will be essential to develop the collaborative approach the world needs to take if we are to unlock the full potential of the steel industry’s efforts to decarbonise. This includes working with governments around the world to develop consistent and supportive policy frameworks to enable our industry to succeed in meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement.”

Text: ArcelorMittal Corporate Communications

Photo: ArcelorMittal

The technical objective of the LVS3 project is to disseminate knowledge acquired in recent years about the environmental impact assessment of steel and composite buildings. During the last decade, a lot of research projects have been funded to develop methodologies, systems, and products aimed at improving thermal efficiency as well as the global environmental footprint of steel buildings. The new EN 15804 standard, intended for environmental calculation of buildings, now takes into account the fact that steel is a recyclable material (Module D).

Sustainability includes environmental, economic, and social concerns for achieving long-lasting development. Sustainability of construction comprises the major health and environmental aspects related to the life cycles of all types of buildings. A building’s life cycle includes production, use, deconstruction, the underlying activities, materials, and energy flows, all of which generate inevitable influence on the planet – both good and bad. Steel, as a building material, has undeniable and inherent advantages in this respect, among others, due to its mature process of recycling.

The aim of the dissemination project LVS3: Large Valorisation on Sustainability of Steel Structures (RFS2-CT-2013-00016) is to provide information on the different steps used for the environmental assessment of steel and composite buildings in AMECO software.

The software and documents were developed and validated within the scope of the European Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) project SB-Steel: Sustainability of Steel Buildings (SB_Steel, 2014).

The project was divided into four steps:

•     realisation of documentation and software about the sustainability of steel structures
•     translation of the documentation and software interface
•     training for partners involved in seminars
•     organisation of seminars in different European countries

The dissemination package available consists of different documents and software:

•     a design guide
•     a background document
•     AMECO software
•     an App version (mobiles/tablets) of LCA calculations available; also in the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android)
•     PowerPoint presentations
•     all of the documents translated into the majority of the European languages

All of the documents are also available on the following website dedicated to this project in (almost) all European languages: http://sustainable-steel.eu/

ArcelorMittal has taken a leading role in forming and committing to ResponsibleSteel™, the steel industry's first multi-stakeholder global certification initiative.

First global certification programme

ResponsibleSteel™ was set up in 2015 as a non-profit organisation to drive a more responsible future for the steel industry. It will achieve this by building the first global certification programme and standard for the entire steel value chain from mining, to production processes, to final stage sales, and distribution. Certification standards will include the following areas:

• Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Water Responsibility & Biodiversity
• Human Rights & Labour Law
• Local Communities & Business Integrity

ArcelorMittal’s commitment

Explaining ArcelorMittal’s commitment to ResponsibleSteel™, Alan Knight, Global Head of Sustainable Development, said that "responsible production techniques and high ethical and business standards are becoming increasingly important to our customers, and ultimately to their customers and consumers. We want to get to a point where steel users and purchasers have total confidence in their choices. ResponsibleSteel™ provides us with a fantastic opportunity to do this and to create the world’s first certification programme for the industry.”

About ResponsibleSteel™

ResponsibleSteel™ is a membership-based organisation currently comprising 22 members including steel producers, car manufacturers (BMW Group and Daimler), finance providers such as HSBC, industry organisations and NGOs. The scheme will formally launch its certification standards following a rigorous accreditation process which is expected to conclude towards the end of 2019. Once launched, ResponsibleSteel™ expects to rapidly grow its membership base with the aim of becoming the industry-recognised standard around the world.

Inaugurated on 15 November 2018, the Kenitra-Tangier line is the first high-speed line in Morocco. Its main objective is to link the biggest town of the country, Casablanca, to Tangier. This is the first stage of a project to create up to 1500 kms of new railway lines in Morocco. ArcelorMittal is proud to contribute to this high-level project with the participation of ArcelorMittal Europe – Long Products Rails & Special Sections, who provided rails, and WireSolutions, who provided fences.

Sole rails supplier for the Kenitra-Tangier line

ArcelorMittal is the sole rails supplier for the first phase of this project and provided 46 000 tonnes of rails produced by ArcelorMittal España at the Veriña site. We were able to offer the customer rails that combine excellent reliability, geometrical precision, strict flatness tolerance, and the highest quality on the market. Our 60E1 R260Mn rails measuring 36 metres long have a lower wear than our R260 standard grade. They also fulfil all of the requirements for high-speed railways:

• Safety
• Comfort
• Durability and cost efficiency
• Minimum acoustic impact
• Service
• Environmentally-friendly

Fences from Bissen on the north part of the line

The Moroccan rail operator ONCF*, via the local provider/installer Menasteel Industry, has entrusted the supply of WireSolutions’ high security fencing Atak®, produced in our plant in Bissen, Luxembourg. Our fences were installed along the north part of the line. This represents 50% in terms of volume (of the north part of the line) and 146 kms of fences. This is the first entry into the public market in Morocco for Bissen and a good opportunity to become an important player on the North African market.

Kenitra-Tangier in only 47 minutes

The line between Casablanca and Tangier is the first step in ONCF’s project to create 1500 kms of railways in Morocco. It will significantly reduce travel time from Casablanca to Tangier from 4 hours 45 minutes to around 2 hours. The 200-km track between Kenitra and Tangier is linked to the existent rail line between Kenitra and Casablanca. With trains running at a speed of 320 km/h, it is now possible to travel from Kenitra to Tangier in only 47 minutes.

In the future, the line will be extended to the south through Marrakesh to Agadir, and another line is planned from Rabat through Fez to Oujda.

*ONCF (Office National des Chemins de Fer du Maroc)

LCA - Life cycle analysis or assessment, now a common method for all resources and products, is of course also important for steel in construction. ArcelorMittal is fully committed to promoting the sustainability of steel. LCAs in the construction industry will now include the so called "Module D" which considers the end of life recycling possibilities of construction materials in general and metals and steel products  in particular.

What is LCA?

The procedures of LCA are part of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) 14040 series of standards. LCA provides a methodology to take into account the environmental impacts of the manufacturing processes of a product, the extraction of the raw materials used by these processes, the use and maintenance of the product by the consumer, its end–of-life (recycling, reuse or disposal) as well as the various methods of transport occurring between every link of the chain. Below pic. 1

LCA for steel products

Correct modelling of the recycling potential of steel products at the end-of-life phase is critical for our sector to compete with other materials and demonstrate the performance of steels solutions to meet  the demand for “best in class” sustainable buildings.

At  ArcelorMittal, safe, sustainable steel has long been our tagline. A life-cycle approach translates the relatively high input of energy and associated emissions of the transformation process from units of mass into units of functionality (i.e. “functional equivalence”,  e.g. the same load bearing capacity over certain length for different beam solutions).

Our advanced high strength steels showcase their premium structural performance over conventional steels or competitive materials in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) benchmarks measured over unit of functionality.

In Europe, an environmental product declaration (EPD) is a standardized way of quantifying the environmental impact of a product or system following Life Cycle Analysis.

For us as a steelmaker, it is also strategically important to demonstrate this life-style approach - in terms of governments and policies – so that the long service-life, re-use and multi-recycling characteristics of steel are adequately appreciated and measured.

However, a recurring point of contention in the tools used to define these government policies is how to quantify the environmental benefits of recycling.

Typically steel products made over the integrated route have a scrap content limited to a value between 10-20% where as the product at end-of-life will be recycled at rates between 85-95%. The ‘recycled content’ method only incorporates the environmental benefits realised today, in contrast with the ‘end-of-life’ method that additionally accounts  for the future environmental benefits emerging from scrap that will be generated at end-of-life.

Metal industries like ours are advocating the “end-of-life recycling rate” as the most appropriate indicator for metals while available volumes of scrap are insufficient to match demand.

Steel and construction

The construction and infrastructure industry is our biggest client; a large percentage of the steel we produce ends up in buildings across the world – from the new One World Trade Centre in New York City to low-cost housing communities in South Africa.

Government environmental regulators’ studies indicate that the construction industry is responsible for a huge part of the CO2 emissions and energy consumption and up to 70% of all waste. This has brought the construction industry to the top of the regulators’ list of priorities.

To enable the adequate assessment of the sustainability of buildings and public or civil-works, products used in construction of buildings are increasingly required to provide EPDs for all products used listing clearly the major environmental impacts over different stages of its life-cycle. (Picture 2)

CEN/TC 350 and the importance of Module D

In Europe, to avoid the creation of trade barriers in the common market, the European Commission gave a mandate to its normalisation body, CEN/ TC 350, to develop a harmonised standard to define the methodology to implement and calculate EPDs and assess sustainable performances at building level.

Knowing that the EPDs of products are the basis of their competitive strength in the environmental assessment of a building, all the relevant material sectors took an interest in guiding the calculation method developed under CEN/TC 350 to reflect the specific competitive strengths of the material they represented.

The result was the publication of the final standard, called EN 15804 at the end of 2012. This standard includes a “Module D” which provides the opportunity to account for the benefits of end-of-life recycling of steel in an EPD.

The inclusion of Module D is a major accomplishment which extends the reporting of environmental benefits of recycling from recycled content percentages only to equally include the end-of-life recycling possibilities. This method and inclusion is especially significant for steel products made predominantly from iron ore, for example flat steel products made via the integrated route. Being net generators of scrap, these products can now claim the environmental credits of future recycling in Module D.

This also has other repercussions. If Module D were not included, it would have caused a significant negative impact on the competitive position in environmental assessments for all of ArcelorMittal’s products.

Entrenching Module D into all assessments

Currently Module D - with the end of life recycling benefits -  is an optional module for assessments of buildings and constructions.

The added value of making Module D reporting mandatory is already recognised in Germany (IBU system) and Belgium (Royal Decree on building products) and in France at the beginning of 2014.

Recently, AISI in the United States has shown  interest in  the European methodology to implement EPDs, including our “Module D” approach and the new version of LEED building assessment is also considering EPDs as part of the environmental performance of buildings.