IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v377y2025ipds0306261924020944.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decarbonization pathways analysis and recommendations in the green steel supply chain of a typical steel end user-automotive industry

Author

Listed:
  • Shen, Jialin
  • Zhang, Qi
  • Tian, Shuoshuo

Abstract

China's automotive industry, the world's largest producer and consumer, has reached a crucial stage in its transition from rapid expansion to high-quality and low-carbon development. Considering the decarbonization of the whole automotive industry, in addition to reducing the CO2 emissions from fuel supply and exhaust pipes, which account for 65–80 % of the total value chain CO2 emissions, the automotive industry should also accelerate the decarbonization of raw materials, which contribute to 18–22 % of these CO2 emissions. Many automotive manufacturers are collaborating with steel producers on green steel initiatives due to the high CO2 emissions from steel production, the integrated nature of the steel supply chain, and the need for early planning in low-carbon steel production routes transformation. To clarify the carbon emission characteristic of the automotive steel supply chain, this research establishes a mathematical method for calculating cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of automotive steel product based on BF (Blast furnace)-BOF (Basic oxygen furnace), Scrap-EAF (Electric arc furnace), and DRI (Direct reduced iron)-EAF steel production routes. The cradle-to-gate carbon footprints of BF-BOF, Scrap-EAF, and DRI-EAF steel production routes are 1711.84 kgCO2/t-sp (steel product), 916.39 kgCO2/t-sp, and 2738.53 kgCO2/t-sp. A projection of CO2 emissions in automotive steel supply chain from 2020 to 2060 has been investigated, taking into account production structure adjustment, scrap recycling, and low-carbon electricity adoption, as well as the demand for automotive steel products. Projections from 2020 to 2060 indicate that the CO2 emission intensity of the automotive steel supply chain will decrease by 28.25 % by 2030 and 93.99 % by 2060, with total emissions dropping by 28.47 % and 96.92 %, respectively. This research identifies effective decarbonization measures in the automotive steel supply chain, including internal and end-of-life (EOL) steel scrap recycling, which offer significant CO2 emissions reduction without increased costs, demonstrating high cost-effectiveness. In a word, this research provides a technical framework and data foundation for decarbonizing the automotive steel supply chain.

Suggested Citation

  • Shen, Jialin & Zhang, Qi & Tian, Shuoshuo, 2025. "Decarbonization pathways analysis and recommendations in the green steel supply chain of a typical steel end user-automotive industry," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 377(PD).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:377:y:2025:i:pd:s0306261924020944
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124711
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924020944
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124711?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mohammadi, Mir Ahmad & Sayadi, Ahmad Reza & Khoshfarman, Mahsa & Husseinzadeh Kashan, Ali, 2022. "A systems dynamics simulation model of a steel supply chain-case study," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Takuma Watari & Sho Hata & Kenichi Nakajima & Keisuke Nansai, 2023. "Limited quantity and quality of steel supply in a zero-emission future," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 6(3), pages 336-343, March.
    3. Wang, Junya & Zhao, Qinfang & Ning, Ping & Wen, Shikun, 2024. "Greenhouse gas contribution and emission reduction potential prediction of China's aluminum industry," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    4. Zhang, Qi & Xu, Jin & Wang, Yujie & Hasanbeigi, Ali & Zhang, Wei & Lu, Hongyou & Arens, Marlene, 2018. "Comprehensive assessment of energy conservation and CO2 emissions mitigation in China’s iron and steel industry based on dynamic material flows," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 251-265.
    5. Shen, Angxing & Zhang, Jihong, 2024. "Technologies for CO2 emission reduction and low-carbon development in primary aluminum industry in China: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PA).
    6. Li, Yuan & Zhu, Lei, 2014. "Cost of energy saving and CO2 emissions reduction in China’s iron and steel sector," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 603-616.
    7. Ren, Lei & Zhou, Sheng & Peng, Tianduo & Ou, Xunmin, 2021. "A review of CO2 emissions reduction technologies and low-carbon development in the iron and steel industry focusing on China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    8. Ferretti, I. & Zanoni, S. & Zavanella, L. & Diana, A., 2007. "Greening the aluminium supply chain," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1-2), pages 236-245, July.
    9. Duan, Wenjun & Li, Rongmin & Yang, Shuo & Han, Jiachen & Lv, Xiaojun & Wang, Zhimei & Yu, Qingbo, 2024. "Theoretical study on coal gasification behavior in CO2 atmosphere driven by slag waste heat," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    10. Yuan, Hong & Ma, Minda & Zhou, Nan & Xie, Hui & Ma, Zhili & Xiang, Xiwang & Ma, Xin, 2024. "Battery electric vehicle charging in China: Energy demand and emissions trends in the 2020s," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 365(C).
    11. Godart, Peter & Hart, Douglas, 2020. "Aluminum-powered climate change resiliency: From aluminum debris to electricity and clean water," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    12. Jannesar Niri, Anahita & Poelzer, Gregory A. & Zhang, Steven E. & Rosenkranz, Jan & Pettersson, Maria & Ghorbani, Yousef, 2024. "Sustainability challenges throughout the electric vehicle battery value chain," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    13. Wang, Peng & Jiang, Zeyi & Geng, Xinyi & Hao, Shiyu & Zhang, Xinxin, 2014. "Quantification of Chinese steel cycle flow: Historical status and future options," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 191-199.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Hanxin & Sun, Wenqiang & Li, Weidong & Ma, Guangyu, 2022. "A carbon flow tracing and carbon accounting method for exploring CO2 emissions of the iron and steel industry: An integrated material–energy–carbon hub," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    2. Yang, Honghua & Ma, Linwei & Li, Zheng, 2023. "Tracing China's steel use from steel flows in the production system to steel footprints in the consumption system," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    3. Yuancheng Lin & Honghua Yang & Linwei Ma & Zheng Li & Weidou Ni, 2021. "Low-Carbon Development for the Iron and Steel Industry in China and the World: Status Quo, Future Vision, and Key Actions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-28, November.
    4. An, Runying & Yu, Biying & Li, Ru & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2018. "Potential of energy savings and CO2 emission reduction in China’s iron and steel industry," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 862-880.
    5. Chen, Qianqian & Gu, Yu & Tang, Zhiyong & Wei, Wei & Sun, Yuhan, 2018. "Assessment of low-carbon iron and steel production with CO2 recycling and utilization technologies: A case study in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 192-207.
    6. Yu, Biying & Dai, Ying & Fu, Jiahao & Qi, Jiahong & Li, Xia, 2025. "Industrial risks assessment for the large-scale development of electric arc furnace steelmaking technology," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 377(PC).
    7. Hu, Hang & Yang, Lingzhi & Yang, Sheng & Zou, Yuchi & Wang, Shuai & Chen, Feng & Guo, Yufeng, 2024. "Development and assessment of an integrated wind energy system for green steelmaking based on electric arc furnace route," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).
    8. Sandra Kiessling & Hamidreza Gohari Darabkhani & Abdel-Hamid Soliman, 2022. "The Bio Steel Cycle: 7 Steps to Net-Zero CO 2 Emissions Steel Production," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(23), pages 1-22, November.
    9. Chen, Demin & Li, Jiaqi & Wang, Zhao & Lu, Biao & Chen, Guang, 2022. "Hierarchical model to find the path reducing CO2 emissions of integrated iron and steel production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    10. Wang, Xiaoyang & Yu, Biying & An, Runying & Sun, Feihu & Xu, Shuo, 2022. "An integrated analysis of China’s iron and steel industry towards carbon neutrality," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 322(C).
    11. Yuan, Yuxing & Na, Hongming & Chen, Chuang & Qiu, Ziyang & Sun, Jingchao & Zhang, Lei & Du, Tao & Yang, Yuhang, 2024. "Status, challenges, and prospects of energy efficiency improvement methods in steel production: A multi-perspective review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 304(C).
    12. Wang, Peng & Zhao, Shen & Dai, Tao & Peng, Kun & Zhang, Qi & Li, Jiashuo & Chen, Wei-Qiang, 2022. "Regional disparities in steel production and restrictions to progress on global decarbonization: A cross-national analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    13. Vögele, Stefan & Grajewski, Matthias & Govorukha, Kristina & Rübbelke, Dirk, 2020. "Challenges for the European steel industry: Analysis, possible consequences and impacts on sustainable development," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    14. Xu, Tingting & Huo, Zhaoyi & Wang, Wenjing & Xie, Ning & Li, Lili & Liu, Yingjie & Mu, Lin, 2024. "Evaluation of by-product-gas utilization options for carbon reduction at an integrated iron and steel mill," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 294(C).
    15. Ren, Lei & Zhou, Sheng & Peng, Tianduo & Ou, Xunmin, 2021. "A review of CO2 emissions reduction technologies and low-carbon development in the iron and steel industry focusing on China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    16. Li, Yibo & Li, Juan & Sun, Mei & Guo, Yanzi & Cheng, Faxin & Gao, Cuixia, 2024. "Analysis of carbon neutrality technology path selection in the steel industry under policy incentives," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    17. Li, Chengzhe & Zhang, Libo & Wang, Qunwei & Zhou, Dequn, 2024. "Towards low-carbon steel: System dynamics simulation of policies impact on green hydrogen steelmaking in China and the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    18. Scott, James & Ho, William & Dey, Prasanta K. & Talluri, Srinivas, 2015. "A decision support system for supplier selection and order allocation in stochastic, multi-stakeholder and multi-criteria environments," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 226-237.
    19. Hu, Xueyue & Wang, Chunying & Elshkaki, Ayman, 2024. "Material-energy Nexus: A systematic literature review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    20. Hajaliakbari, Nasrollah & Hassanpour, Saied, 2017. "Analysis of thermal energy performance in continuous annealing furnace," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 829-842.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:377:y:2025:i:pd:s0306261924020944. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.