Ovako’s sustainability report 2020

Our Sustainability Report for 2020 is now available and outlines a roadmap towards new ambitious climate targets. The new report highlights our leadership in sustainable steel production with a 54% reduction in CO2 emissions since 2015 and a carbon footprint for our products that is 80% lower than the global average. It also sets new targets in three areas to build on these achievements through to 2040. We aim to maintain and strengthen our leadership in reducing carbon footprint as well as continuing to develop great end-user applications with large environmental benefits. Finally, we are commencing projects to help reduce concerns with copper in scrap steel. Please download our Sustainability Report by using the link below.

A major milestone covered in the Sustainability Report is the successful full-scale trial of using green hydrogen in our pit furnace at Hofors to heat steel before rolling. If adopted by steel producers around the world, this technique has the potential to save 300 million tonnes of CO2 annually, provided that access to fossil-free electricity is available to produce hydrogen by electrolysis.

Grinding properties of recycled steel

Within the automotive industry, there has been a school of thought that engine crankshafts should be manufactured from ore-based steel. This was based on the belief that recycled steel does not perform as well during grinding operations. In particular, it is considered to be more susceptible to “grinding burns”, a type of thermal damage that decreases surface hardness, introduces tensile residual stress and shortens fatigue life. Some major players in the industry decided it was time to challenge this belief. Because using recycled steel for crankshafts offers the potential for significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and of course contributes to the circular economy. To investigate, the Swedish government financed a 3-year project coordinated by Chalmers University of Technology, with project members including: Volvo Group, Volvo Cars, Scania, Bharat Forge, Ovako, RISE IVF. The key conclusion was that “the steel sources, whether from recycled steel or ore-based steel, are equally good”. The footprint of ore-based hot-rolled bar is some 3,300 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) per tonne, as the Ovako technical report “Cradle-to-gate – understanding CO2

A circular steel economy and carbon neutrality

We take pride in contributing to the circular economy and producing steel that is close to carbon neutral. More than 97% of our input material comes from scrap, and some 94% of our byproducts become useful products, such as in road construction. We consider ourselves world-leaders among all our peers and within Ovako it is our steel operations in Smedjebacken that is the leader. We continuously benchmark ourselves in the Group and externally. In doing so, we prefer the full cradle-to-gate approach which includes scopes 1, 2 and 3. However, many of the figures that we find from other producers only relate to scopes 1 and 2, typically only for the steel mill and are also divided by the tonnes of crude steel produced, not finished products. If we apply the same methodology, our Smedjebacken mill shines even more in comparison. Hot-rolled products from SmeBox are some 85% below global average in carbon footprint and the steel mill CO2 emissions are some 95% below global average. See the latest emission figures for our three mill operations in the illustration below.

Join our upcoming webinar on sustainability

We would like to explain more about where we are now on our sustainability journey, and what our targets and next steps are. We have scheduled an online event on sustainability for June 9, where we will present details of our thoughts on carbon-neutrality and the circular economy. Please register by clicking the link below.