• Pilot project successfully produces green steel using green hydrogen instead of natural gas.
• Green hydrogen has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions in steel-making by up to 95 percent.
• Pilot project demonstrates potential to accelerate UAE’s plans to become major hydrogen and green steel production hub.
EMSTEEL, the UAE’s largest publicly listed steel and building materials company and Masdar, the UAE’s clean energy powerhouse, have announced the successful start-up of a pilot project demonstrating the use of green hydrogen to produce green steel.
The Abu Dhabi-based project, the first-of-its-kind in the Middle East and North African region, uses green hydrogen to extract iron from iron ore, a key step in steelmaking. The pilot project is now fully operational and has successfully commenced the production of green steel.
The renewable hydrogen produced by the project has been certified by Avance Labs, the hydrogen code manager accredited by the International Tracking Standard Foundation, in accordance with the recently released ISO 19870 methodology for hydrogen. The certification data was validated by Bureau Veritas, acting as the third-party assurance provider.
Steel production is a very important industry in the UAE; however it is carbon-intensive and hard to abate. Globally, the sector contributes between seven and eight percent of worldwide carbon emissions. Decarbonizing this industry is therefore essential to propelling the world towards a net-zero future.
Rising global demand for green steel presents huge growth potential for the UAE, as the country aspires to be a major green steel production hub. The use of sustainable building materials, including steel, is being promoted through the National Green Certificates Program, launched by the UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure in July.
The partnership between EMSTEEL and Masdar has demonstrated the potential for green hydrogen to decarbonize the global steel value chain, whilst demonstrating how clean energy and heavy industry partners in the UAE are collaborating and take urgent joint action to accelerate the energy transition.
Eng. Saeed Ghumran Al Remeithi, Group Chief Executive Officer of EMSTEEL, said: “We are committed to propelling decarbonization efforts in the sector, in support of the UAE’s Net Zero by 2050 Strategy. Our efforts to-date have been fruitful, with our current utilization of clean energy rising above 80% in 2023. EMSTEEL is also the first steelmaker in the world to capture part of its CO2 emissions, enabling us to operate with 45% less carbon intensity than the global average. Our partnership with Masdar will play a key role in continuing to build on our efforts to decarbonize this hard-to-abate sector and the downstream supply chain.”
Masdar Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, said: “Green hydrogen is a vital element in global decarbonization efforts. Even with all the renewables in the world, we cannot meet the decarbonization objectives for hard-to-abate sectors such as steel production. The success of this pilot is an important step in our ongoing efforts, in partnership with EMSTEEL, to achieve meaningful and effective decarbonization of the steel making industry.”
This pilot project aligns with Abu Dhabi’s Low Carbon Hydrogen Policy, which promotes low-carbon hydrogen as a future clean energy source, constituting a significant milestone towards ensuring economic growth, sustainability, and energy security and a strategic step towards a sustainable future. The Low Carbon Hydrogen Policy complements the UAE National Hydrogen Strategy, which seeks to establish the UAE as a leading global producer of low carbon hydrogen by 2031.
Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, EMSTEEL builds on a heritage spanning over a quarter of a century. The Group is committed to creating products, services and solutions to build a better world, in addition to driving global sustainability efforts through promoting a low-carbon supply chain in collaboration with it partners across the ecosystem.
Since its establishment in 2006, Masdar has been a key enabler of the UAE’s vision as a global leader in sustainability and climate action. The company has developed and partnered in projects in over 40 countries, with a mandate to increase its renewable energy portfolio capacity to 100GW by 2030 and to become a leading producer of green hydrogen by the same year. It has set a target of 1 million tonnes per annum of green hydrogen or equivalent derivatives in the UAE and globally within a decade.
