The leading position is stable, and "double carbon" provides new opportunities

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of the Steel Industry to further clarify the low-carbon and intelligent development path of the steel industry. On February 7, 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-quality Development of the Steel Industry", which is an important programmatic document guiding the future development of the steel industry, with the main objectives as follows: By 2025, the iron and steel industry will basically form a high-quality development pattern with reasonable layout structure, stable resource supply, advanced technology and equipment, prominent quality brands, high intelligence level, strong global competitiveness, green, low-carbon and sustainable development. Green and low-carbon aspects: It is required to build a resource recycling system for inter-industry coupling development, complete ultra-low emission transformation of more than 80% of steel production capacity, reduce comprehensive energy consumption per ton of steel by more than 2%, reduce water resource consumption intensity by more than 10%, and ensure that carbon peaks before 2030. Intelligent and innovative: the industry R & D investment intensity strives to reach 1.5%, hydrogen metallurgy, low-carbon metallurgy, clean steel smelting, thin strip casting and rolling, headless rolling and other advanced technology breakthroughs. The CNC rate of key processes has reached about 80%, the digitalization rate of production equipment has reached 55%, and more than 30 intelligent factories have been built.

3. The company has rich reserves of green and intelligent technologies and is expected to fully benefit from the promotion of low-carbon transformation

Strong in green and low-carbon transformation technology, MCC Jingcheng won the world's first hydrogen energy development and utilization demonstration project. In recent years, the company has continued to promote the development of intelligent, green, low carbonization and high efficiency in the field of metallurgy, and has reached the international leading level in the system integration engineering technology of steel main unit and green, intelligent and other systems. The company's research and design institute reserves a number of iconic steel energy saving and emission reduction transformation technologies such as coke oven green transformation, flue gas circulation sintering, sintering waste heat utilization, and many technologies have been applied at project level. According to the company's annual report, its MCC Jingcheng won the world's first hydrogen energy development and utilization demonstration project in 2020 - Hesteel hydrogen energy development and utilization engineering demonstration project design. The project will carry out innovative research and development from the whole process of distributed green energy utilization, low-cost hydrogen production, gas purification, direct hydrogen reduction, carbon dioxide removal and deep processing, water treatment and other processes, trying to explore a low-carbon, or even "zero carbon" economy of the world's steel industry.

Hydrogen metallurgy is the core technology path to achieve low carbon near-zero emissions in the steel industry, and the development prospect is broad. China's iron and steel industry has been continuously energy-saving transformation and environmental protection investment for many years, comprehensive energy consumption per ton of steel has decreased significantly, and the national comprehensive energy consumption per ton of steel is about 539kg of standard coal in 2020, which is 6% lower than that in 2015. However, under the current process technology and equipment, the space for further reduction of energy consumption per ton of steel is limited. If the steel industry is to achieve significant carbon reduction, it will need to fundamentally change the smelting process of coal metallurgy. By replacing coal with hydrogen as a reducing agent in blast furnaces, hydrogen metallurgy can significantly reduce or even completely avoid the carbon emissions of the steel production process (the average emission of 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide in the production of 1 ton of steel under the traditional process). "Replacing coal with hydrogen" is one of the important development paths for the low-carbon transformation of the steel and iron industry, and a number of plans have been introduced at the policy end to promote its development. The guidelines on promoting the high-quality development of the steel industry, issued on February 7, mentioned that efforts should be "strengthened in the research and development and application of low-carbon smelting technologies such as hydrogen smelting, non-blast furnace ironmaking and carbon capture, utilization and storage." On March 23, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Energy Bureau jointly issued the "Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035)", positioning hydrogen energy as "an important part of the future national energy system", "an important carrier for achieving green and low-carbon transformation with energy terminals" and "strategic emerging industries and key development directions for future industries". The plan proposes to gradually explore alternative applications in the industrial field, expand the application space of clean and low hydrogen energy in the chemical industry, and carry out the research and development and application of hydrogen metallurgy technology with hydrogen as a reducing agent. Driven by the policy, the research and development process of hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen smelting and other processes is expected to accelerate significantly, and with the continuous maturity of technology, the industry is expected to meet the rapid development period.