China trade body backs check on steel emissions

naturaller

zy Peter Marsh in Berlin
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

China's main trade body for the steel industry has thrown its weight behind an effort to combat global warming by monitoring worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide by steelmakers.

The China Iron and Steel Association, which represents companies producing three-quarters of the country's steel, is backing a proposal announced yesterday by the International Iron and Steel Institute, a Brussels-based business organisation for the world's top steelmakers, whose members include companies responsible for only about a fifth of China's steel output.

The institute's project will encourage most of the world's leading steel producers to share data on how much carbon dioxide they produce – a step that could lead to standardised methods to cut down emissions using new technologies.

Zhang Xiaogang, chairman of the CISA, told the FT: “[The IISI proposal] is a good idea. Every iron and steel company in the world should be trying to do something to reduce carbon dioxide output.”

Approval of the IISI plan by Chinese steelmakers is essential to the project having any chance of succeeding in cutting emissions by steel plants, which are estimated to contribute 4 per cent of the world's output of man-made greenhouse gases.

China, the biggest steel producer, is responsible for more than a third of the world's output. The country's production of the metal has soared in the past decade.

However, because Chinese steelmakers use relatively old-fashioned technology that creates more carbon dioxide than do plants in western Europe, Japan and the US, they are believed to be responsible for 51 per cent of all the carbon dioxide made by steel plants.

Mr Zhang said he thought the country's largest steelmakers – such as Baosteel, Anshan Iron and Steel and Wuhan – would back the project and offer to monitor their carbon dioxide emissions in a standardised manner to allow global comparisons to be drawn.

Mr Zhang combines his CISA role with being president of Anshan.

中文版本：
http://www.gsean.org/forum/read.php?tid-15921.html