Energy and resource conservation and air pollution abatement in China’s iron and steel industry

Abstract

China's iron and steel industry is one of the largest energy resource consumption and air pollutant emissions industries. In this study, a comprehensive assessment approach is established to evaluate the co-benefits of energy efficiency improvement, resource saving and air pollution abatement between 2015–2050. Five scenarios including the reference scenario, the structure adjustment scenario, the technologies improvement without end-of-pipe measures scenario, the technologies improvement with EOP measures scenario and integrated scenario are developed for analysis. The modeling results demonstrate that scrap resource is enough to support production switching in all five scenarios. Energy resource consumption and air pollution emissions will decline step by step under the synergy effect of technology improvement and structure adjustment. The cumulative emission reductions of selected 35 energy efficiency technologies are 0.731 kg SO2/t, 0.535 kg NOx /t, 0.259 kg PM10/t and 0.579 kg APeq/t at the discount rate of 15%. Sensitivity analysis shows that implementation rates and discount rates are the most critical factors.