Green steel made with nuclear power

Madcap economics

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Feb 23

RE: Will Enbridge pipeline lock in CO2 emissions? Op-ed by Eugene Ellman, who writes on sustainable business and finance.

For a guy who writes about sustainable businesses, Eugene Ellman ought to be panicked about Dofasco’s madcap attempt to make so-called “green” steel.  To be sustainable, a business has to be economically viable, and making steel by hydrogen alone is the most uneconomical way of doing so.  Dofasco will be utterly uncompetitive with steel makers everywhere else, especially Indian and Chinese makers who will continue to use coal.

To make steel with hydrogen alone, you need massive investments in electrical generation.  The footprint of a wind farm and solar panel complex needed to make that much hydrogen would be intolerable, especially in a province fighting to keep its green spaces. You’re going to need nuclear generation.  So, how “green” now is that hydrogen, and that steel?

Green steel is an economic disaster.  Pursuing the chimera of “green” steel wouldn’t be taken seriously but for the cult of climate change.  It is not “sustainable” economically.

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People who talk about “sustainable” anything don’t know what they’re talking about.  They think they mean “steady-state,” which is impossible.  None of the four stages of an insect’s life cycle is sustainable, and that’s why they go through different stages.  And insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years.