History of the steel industry (1970–present)

The world steel industry flattened from 2007 to 2009 at 1,300 million tonnes, before rising again, due to worldwide recession starting in 2008, with its heavy cutbacks in construction, sharply lowered demand and prices falling 40%.

Showing the impact of that plateau, in 2007 ThyssenKrupp spent $12 billion to build the two most modern mills in the world, situated in Alabama and Brazil.

Nowadays, the steel industry is on the edge of a major technological evolution to deal with the huge amounts of CO2 produced in the conventional steelmaking process.

[6] In order to reach the climate objectives as stated in the Paris Climate Agreement, the European Green Deal, etc., the steel industry will have to implement carbon capture and sequestration or carbon capture and utilization technology or change to less conventional steelmaking technologies such as the electric arc furnace route.

Other alternatives are the use of biomass, plastic waste or hydrogen as reducing agent in the blast furnace instead of coal.

[citation needed] Both appendices are from IISI material, earlier on the web but now replaced by more recent data.