Europe needs more and more steel. But, in protecting the climate, he wants to do less and less. Meanwhile, non-European steel-making plants are cheaper and produce much more carbon dioxide than in the European Union.
Aditya Mittal, President and Chief Financial Officer of ArcelorMittal, stresses: Europe will need as much steel as before. But, probably, most of this will be produced in countries that do not have a strict climate policy.
- It will be possible to truthfully announce to the world that CO2 emissions in Europe have been limited. Only that this statement will not matter if we do not take into account the emissions associated with the production of steel, which is actually consumed by European industry, - he points out.
In Asia, everything is different
Last year, steel production in the world increased by 4.6 percent. and exceeded 1.8 billion tons. The main driver of this growth has become China. Production there increased by 6.6% compared with 2017. The Chinese produced more than 928 million tons, which is 51.3 percent. world production.
Steel production in India, which exceeded the ceiling of 106 million tons, is growing more slowly than in China, an increase of 4.9 percent. India has become the second largest steel producer in the world. They overtook Japan, in which production fell by 0.3 percent. up to 104.3 million tons.
With the support of Trump duties, the United States recorded an increase in steel production by 6.2 percent, reaching 86.7 million tons.
In the first row is South Korea, which, after a two-percent increase, produced almost 72.5 million tons of steel and moved up to 5th place in the list of the largest producers.
Iran, another Asian economic power, although in absolute terms 25 million tons is clearly inferior to the leaders, increased production by as much as 17.7 percent! And it entered the top ten largest steel producers in the world, displacing Italy from it. Steel production in Egypt was not much slower, at 13.6 percent. But there its volume is still only 7.8 million tons.
Europe ... Here, especially in the European Union, steel production is actually declining. A little more than 168 million tons were produced in the Union, which is 0.3% less. The largest producer - Germany - recorded a two percent decline. The rest remained close to last year's results. The exception was the Czech Republic, where steel production increased by more than 9%, but a total of only 5 million tons.
