The sustainability podcast Steel to Zero: Reducing the steel value chain’s carbon footprint

Protecting the environment and combating climate change are among the most important and pressing issues of our time. Decarbonization, which Waelzholz is helping advance as one of the leading players in the steel industry, plays a crucial role in this context. In our new sustainability podcast Steel to Zero: How steel will go green, we highlight how reducing carbon emissions in the steel industry needs to be considered along the entire value chain in order to unlock as much potential as possible. In this context, Waelzholz has invited experts from various stages of the value chain to join us for a discussion.

Steel is multitalented – versatile, transformable, and recyclable. Waelzholz’s range also includes special grades that are needed to make certain applications possible in the first place, such as sophisticated products for the energy transition. Reducing the carbon footprint of steel products is now an important challenge that Waelzholz is also tackling head on. The goal is to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. A closer look reveals that this is an extremely complex task, as each individual stage of the steel value chain has an impact on the next. And this is precisely where the new Waelzholz podcast on sustainability comes in – over the course of three episodes, it illustrates the interrelationships between the stages of the value chain with respect to reducing carbon emissions. To do so, proven experts from the various manufacturing stages – from crude steel production and cold rolling to the final product – are given the opportunity to express their views. They reveal how the decarbonization of the steel industry can be achieved and what economic and political decisions and measures need to be implemented along the way. In addition, they highlight where major steps have already been taken today to reduce carbon emissions.

The first episode of our new sustainability podcast Steel to Zero is now online and kicks off with the title “The challenge: the steel industry’s complex value chain.” In it, you’ll learn about Waelzholz’s position as an integral part of the steel value chain on the road to climate neutrality and the role steel plays in the energy transition. Indeed, even if climate-neutral production and downstream processing of cold rolled steel strip aren’t yet possible at the present time, the material already forms the basis for implementing important applications that are part of a sustainable economy.

In the first podcast episode, CEO Dr. Heino Buddenberg and Managing Director Sales and Purchasing Dr. Matthias Gierse explain how Waelzholz involves upstream and downstream companies in its own strategy to systematically reduce steel materials’ carbon footprint and how this ambitious goal can be achieved if all the market participants work together. This episode also highlights the political framework conditions required and the significance of hydrogen for steel production. In addition, you’ll learn about a system developed by Waelzholz itself to precisely track and allocate the carbon emissions of each material version and the role it plays in decarbonization.