Rio Tinto and Nippon Steel signed a climate agreement to develop technologies for low-carbon emission steel value chain. The mining giants also signed a climate partnership with China’s leading steelmaker Baowu Steel and committed an investment of $10mn for low-carbon steelmaking. These partnership indicate the emphasis on low-emission in the global steel industry and the transition toward adoption of more energy-efficient and less polluting technologies for steelmaking.
Nippon and Rio Tinto’s collaboration is in line with Japan’s commitment to become carbon-neutral society by 2050. The two companies will explore decarbonisation of the value chain starting from mining to steelmaking integrating each others technologies and innovating steel production to reduce carbon-emission.
With Baowu, Rio Tinto has entered an advance climate partnership for the next two years. The partnership is an extension of Rio Tinto, Baowu and Tsinghua University efforts to develop new methods for reducing carbon emissions as well as reducing emissions in existing steel manufacturing process and improving the performance of the steel value chain. The investment will support short and long-term decarbonisation targets of the steel sector.