Japan Steel Industry Cuts CO2 Emission by 12.1% from F1990

Japan Iron and Steel Federation reported on Friday to Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry the steel industry’s energy consumption was 2,159 peta joules and carbon dioxide emission from energy was 176.3 million tonnes in fiscal 2008 ended March 2009, which was 11.5% and 12.1% lower than the level in fiscal 1990. The reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emission was higher than the target of 10% and 9% reduction for fiscal 2010 under the voluntary action program for environmental protection. The industry tries to keep effort to clear the target when the reduction was mainly due to 3.2% lower raw steel output at 101.334 million tonnes in fiscal 2008 from fiscal 1990.

The industry reported the energy consumption per tonne of steel production decreased by 8.6% and CO2 emission per tonne decreased by 9.2% to fiscal 2008 from fiscal 1990.

The participants were 91 companies for the program when 18 companies participated in the program while Tokyo Steel Manufacturing was away from the program. The federation collected data from each company while the data was estimated from statistics before.

The industry got 1 million tonnes of CO2 emission credit from the federation’s capital participation in funds and 55 million tonnes of credit from technical support to Chinese steel industry. The credit represents 11.2 million tonnes of carbon emission or 5.6% reduction for the industry.

The industry also reported high functional steel contributed to major CO2 emission reduction for automobile industry. The federation calculated the contribution was total 14.87 million tonnes in fiscal 2008 including 8.51 million tonnes in domestic market and 6.36 million tonnes in export. The steel industry also contributed to lower CO2 emission totaled 81.1 million tonnes or around 6% of total Japanese emission in various areas including production process, high functional steel supply and technology transfer.