The Indian steel sector would need the government’s policy intervention for self-sufficiency in backward and forward integration, raw material security, especially in case of coking coal and reducing import dependence on it, Sajjan Jindal, chairman and managing director, JSW Steel, said.
He, at a Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry-organised minerals, mining and metals conclave, said that although the steel industry required a transformative approach in view of the COP-26 outcome, the major barrier to change was shutting down old plants and putting up new plants with high capital requirement.
“We need to rebuild the Indian steel industry,” Jindal said adding a proactive policy was required to facilitate green steel making.
Jindal said although the global steel industry contributed to only 0.7% of the global GDP, it contributed 7% of the world’s total green house gas emission. India in its next phase of capacity expansion from the present 110 million tonne (mt) to 300 mt should look at carbon capture and storage solution (CCUS), substituting carbon for green hydrogen and using renewable energy to run the steel plants.
While Tata Steel has already commissioned India’s first carbon-capture unit to reuse captured CO2 from blast furnaces at its Jamshedpur plant, Tata Metalliks chairman Sandeep Kumar said that a green grid would be required in steel plants’ increased dependence on renewables.
However, Jindal said, his company’s expansion plan for the next four years would be more than what it achieved in the last decade, though he didn’t divulge any further details on it.
JSW Steel at present has integrated steel production capacity of 28 mtpa, which it wants to increase to 37.5 mtpa by 2025.
