The Big Switch: The race toward green steel

This week, Carbon Copy presents an episode of The Big Switch, a narrative show from Columbia University about how to decarbonize the economy. 

Steel goes into pretty much everything around us, from buildings and bridges to the furniture in our homes. And decarbonizing the steel industry is essential because we need steel to decarbonize the world. Think about it. From solar panels to electric vehicles to the power grid itself, steel is used to manufacture a lot of what we need to fight climate change.

But there’s a problem. Current processes used to manufacture steel require a lot of fossil fuels. In fact, steel manufacturing is responsible for up to 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In this episode, Melissa Lott, director of research at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, breaks down the race underway to achieve zero-carbon green steel. It’s a competition among four key technologies: recycling, carbon capture and storage, electrolysis and — everyone’s current favorite — hydrogen (or, as we call it in this episode, the Usain Bolt of technology).

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

The Carbon Copy is supported by GridX. GridX provides invaluable business insight that improves the uptake of the programs, products and services needed to decarbonize. Delivering on our clean energy future is complex. GridX exists to simplify the journey. Learn more.

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