In major cities around the world, industrial activity is creating visible damages. (Source: International Business Times)

In order to meet this mark, industries need to find sustainable sources of fuel in the near future, or be met with costly penalties. Up to now, the price of non-renewable fuel was too attractive for clean energy to be competitive. However, tighter regulations, major leaps in technology and state-level commitment have birthed a new era of renewable energy.

Energy you can bank on

According to Bloomberg analysts, USD 10.2 trillion will be spent on new power generation by 2040, 72 percent of which will go towards wind and solar photovoltaic plants. By then, the cost of solar electricity will drop 66 percent, meaning by 2021, solar power will be cheaper than energy from coal in China, India, Mexico and the UK. The cost of onshore wind power will decrease by 47 percent by 2040, and offshore wind power by 71 percent thanks to more advanced and cost-effective wind turbines.  

Renewable energy is getting more and more competitive, and companies who don’t make the switch to clean fuel will be left out of the race.

SEE ALSO: How POSCO Sees a Future of Renewable Energy

However, electricity doesn’t fall from trees.

It falls from steel! Tons of steel (literally) are used to extract and convert energy from renewable energy sources.

Wind Energy

Most wind turbines are made of steel, and for an average wind turbine, 140 tons of steel are used. That accounts for 80 percent of all the materials that go into the tower, the nacelle, rotor blades and its supporting facilities. The majority of steel is used to make the tower which serves as the foundation on which the blades turn to generate energy. There are several types of turbine towers, such as steel-concrete hybrid towers, steel truss towers and steel lattice towers, but about 90 percent of all wind turbine towers are made of tubular steel. Also, steel’s non-corrosive properties maximize the lifetime of wind turbines and minimize maintenance costs.

Solar Energy

Solar electricity is one of the most promising types of renewable energy. By as soon as 2030, it can make up 13 percent of the world’s energy, and by 2050, the sun will be the largest source of electricity on earth. And steel will be soaking it all up – the sunlight that is. Steel makes up not only the frame of the solar panels, but the heat exchangers and other related infrastructure. Stainless steel is a great choice for solar panel frames because it is dense, high in strength and has the greatest corrosion-resistance than other light metals.  

SEE ALSO: India: A Rising Sun in the Global Renewable Energy Industry

Geothermal Energy

Mother earth just keeps on giving. There are about 1400 TWh of geothermal energy in the earth’s core that can be harvested by 2050. Geothermal energy gives off extreme heat, so it is vital for the heat exchangers, condensers, pipes, filters, pumps and valves to be corrosion resistant. Otherwise, maintenance costs would be unsustainable and corrosion can contaminate the water as well. That’s why most of the infrastructure related to geothermal energy is made of iron castings, stainless steel and steel alloys.

Tidal Energy

There’s plenty of energy in the sea as well. In the world’s oceans, there are about 1 million megawatts of usable tidal energy. Steel makes up most parts of the underwater turbines including the nacelles, support structures and underlying piles for a sturdy and sustainable power source. As with other renewable energy, increasing the lifetime and decreasing maintenance costs will determine the competitiveness of tidal energy. Thus, stainless steel is the go-to material for corrosion resistance. The infrastructure related to tidal energy extraction is massive in scale and will call for thousands and thousands of pounds of steel to construct.  

Korea is the largest source of tidal energy in the world, with 552.7 GHw of electricity harvested from Siwha Lake every year. It’s also where steelmaker POSCO is located to provide the necessary types and grades of steel for renewable energy production.

POSCO E&C has its own solar, wind, tidal and refuse-derived fuel (RDF) plants, which makes sure even industrial wastes get turned into energy. The company was also the first company in Korea to build a solar power plant in 8 different regions capable of generating 31.2MW of solar electricity.

In order to stay competitive in the market, industries are already using or transitioning towards renewable energy sources to fuel their business activities. As governments around the globe also commit to a greener future, the demand for steel used in renewable energy infrastructure will see a significant boost.

Cover photo courtesy of the National Geographic.

POSCO GIGA STEEL was developed to provide automakers with a high strength, lightweight material solution that also produces significantly less production emissions and is completely recyclable. Take a look at our infographic to find out more about POSCO GIGA STEEL and the benefits it offers for automakers looking for lightweight, sustainable steel solutions.  

In this contribution article, Dr. Roland Geyer, associate professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara, explores why we need to move beyond fuel efficiency as the sole determinant in measuring a car’s sustainability. Dr. Geyer argues that we need to look at the full life cycle of a car – from production to disposal.

Policies with the goal of reducing climate change impacts from cars focus on reducing tailpipe emissions. While automakers can respond by improving fuel economy with lightweight materials, this can lead to an increase in carbon emissions over the life of a vehicle. Taking a lifecycle approach to automotive environmental policy—from production to disposal—helps avoid such unintended consequences.

Tailpipe Mitigation is Not Enough

Most climate impacts from internal combustion vehicles come from tailpipe carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The other life cycle stages, which include vehicle production, fuel production, and vehicle disposal, have much lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Understandably, therefore legislators focus on curbing tailpipe CO2 emissions and increasing fuel economy. However, automotive climate policy with an exclusive focus on tailpipe emissions opens the door to unintended consequences. This is equally true for vehicles that use biofuels, electric power trains, or lightweight materials to increase fuel economy.

As use phase emissions are minimized, Production phase share of emissions in the total life cycle increases significantly.

Critics of biofuels contend that they can cause, directly or indirectly, more GHG emissions than they avoid. Skeptics of electromobility argue that the GHG emissions of producing electric vehicles—and the electricity to drive them—can outweigh their lack of tailpipe emissions. The production of lightweight materials is typically GHG-intensive, so their widespread use would significantly increase the climate change impact of vehicle production. Good environmental policy aimed at reducing climate impact from vehicles, therefore, needs to consider these “upstream emissions,” which could severely compromise or even negate their climate change mitigation goals.

Without LCA, some lightweighting strategies can lead to a net increase in total life cycle emissions—an unintended consequence.

The Unintended Consequences of Vehicle Lightweighting

Vehicle lightweighting, in particular, poses a threat to effective automotive climate policy. Lightweighting can increase total climate impact and defeat the purpose of the policy since the increase in emissions from vehicle production can be larger than the emissions saved due to improved fuel economy. The trend of increasing drive-train efficiency and decreasing carbon intensity of fuels and electricity will further reduce any benefits gained from decreasing the weight of the vehicle. The importance of addressing the unintended consequences of tailpipe-only regulation, therefore, will only grow in the future.

Therefore the 2014 revision to the EU’s regulation on CO2 emissions from new passenger cars states that “policy action should […] ensure that those upstream emissions do not erode the benefits related to the improved operational energy use of vehicles.”

Life Cycle Assessment Helps Avoid Unintended Consequences

The only way to avoid unintended consequences is to use life cycle thinking and life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA is a mature environmental assessment tool with global standards and close to 50 years of development and practice. It provides a rigorous methodology to account for all emissions generated during the life of a product, making it the ideal tool to identify and quantify environmental trade-offs.

Today LCA is widely used by academia, industry, government, and non-governmental organizations. Together with academia, companies and industry associations are leading the way in the deployment of LCA. Most car manufacturers are already using life cycle thinking and LCA, which is equally accepted by material producers.  

Environmental agencies around the world support LCA, including those of the European Commission, which call it the “the best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products currently available.” Life-cycle-based environmental regulation is in its infancy and not without challenges. Nevertheless, environmental regulators and policymakers have begun to draft legislation with a life cycle perspective, such as California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. The regulation of automotive GHG emissions provides a unique opportunity to align regulatory practice with the state of the art in environmental product policy and launch a new area of successful environmental legislation free of major unintended consequences.

It combines several unique features:

• Strength & Safety: POSCO GIGA STEEL is more than three times stronger than automotive aluminum. Because of its high strength, POSCO GIGA STEEL also adheres to some of the most stringent international safety standards.

• Formability: Because the mixing ratio of manganese has been precisely controlled, POSCO GIGA STEEL has highly formable properties that allow it to be made into complex auto parts without any special processing.

• Lightweighting: Because POSCO GIGA STEEL boasts high strength, it is possible to use less of it. This ultimately makes it lighter than car frames made of general steel or aluminum.

• Affordability: POSCO GIGA STEEL is a cost-effective solution for automakers, especially when compared to alternative materials, which in turn helps lower prices for consumers.

• Sustainability: When looking at the entire lifecycle of a vehicle made with steel, POSCO GIGA STEEL emits 10% lower CO² emissions compared to aluminum.

Take a look at the infographic below and discover the benefits that POSCO GIGA STEEL can bring to both automakers and consumers today.

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Several factors are contributing to the growing interest in electric vehicles. Stricter CO2 emission standards are changing the way cars are being made, and consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious at the same time. To produce more fuel efficient vehicles, car makers are looking to advanced materials in lightweighting that can help make vehicles more eco-friendly while being safe and affordable.

The Push to Reduce Carbon Emissions

In the US, the transportation sector produces nearly 30 percent of all global warming emissions, and more than half of those emissions come from passenger vehicles. Between 1990 and 2004, the average fuel economy of new vehicles actually decreased, but since 2005 those numbers have begun to improve, resulting in less greenhouse emissions (see chart below).

Greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector remain high but have gone down in recent years. Increased efforts by the auto industry to produce more fuel-efficient cars is helping this trend. (Source: EPA Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2014)

As air pollution gets worse and global temperatures continue to rise, governments, consumers, and car manufacturers have all seen the urgency in creating more fuel-efficient vehicles. However, in order to build electric vehicles, hybrid cars, and even more fuel efficient combustion engine autos, new materials and production methods must be used. Specifically, cars need to be lighter.

Reducing Weight, Reducing CO2 Emissions

The heavier a car is, the more fuel is required to move it. A study from MIT found that for each 100-kg reduction in a car’s body weight, fuel consumption could decrease by about 0.3 L/100 km for cars and about 0.4 L/100 km for light trucks. This not only translates into fewer CO2 emissions but also into cost savings for consumers. The following table provides estimated fuel cost savings for a range of weight reductions. Today’s cars and light trucks weigh between 1,000 to 3,800 kg.

Manufacturers have been testing new materials to use in their cars in order to make the weight reductions necessary for a viable EV. Utilization of alternative materials like aluminum, magnesium, and carbon fiber components are increasing due to their lightweight properties. However, additional financial and environmental costs remain high.

In the past, in order to make steel lighter, sacrifices had to be made in strength and ductility. However, recent innovations in advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) have been able to bridge that gap. To demonstrate the recent advancements made with AHSS, engineers designed the PBC-EV, or POSCO Body Concept-Electric Vehicle, using POSCO GIGA STEEL. The PBC-EV car body was able to achieve a 26.4% reduction in total weight when compared to cars of the same size without any sacrifices in safety or structural integrity. 

The Eco-friendly Life Cycle of AHSS

When measuring greenhouse emissions of cars, one must also look beyond the immediate impact of gasoline consumption and view the material more holistically through a life cycle assessment. The emissions costs related to the extraction and production of automobile materials can be high. However, technological advancements in steel production have been able to reduce CO2 emissions – helping to make it one of the most eco-friendly materials for car makers.

Based on its life cycle assessment, measuring carbon dioxide emissions from production to recycling, POSCO GIGA STEEL performs remarkably well as an eco-friendly material. Steel emits 2.0 to 2.5 kg of carbon emissions when producing 1 kg of material while aluminum emits 11 to 12.6 kg when producing the same amount. Even after production, cumulative greenhouse gas emissions of vehicles made with steel is 10% lower when looking at the full life cycle.

Lastly, steel remains the most recycled materials on the planet, and automobiles maintain a recycling rate of nearly 100 percent. Almost all steel products contain recycled steel as steel scrap is a necessary ingredient when producing new steel.

Advancements in AHSS have allowed the auto industry to move beyond the barriers that have held it back in the past. As consumers demand more fuel efficient driving options and as governments around the world impose more strict emissions standards, material advancements in steel will become more critical. It is the breakthroughs in steel technology like these that are helping to bring lightweight, fuel-efficient cars to market.

Throughout April and May, The Steel Wire is exploring trends in the auto industry and how POSCO’s innovations in automotive steel is leading the way toward lighter, stronger, and more affordable cars.