Vietnam urged to march towards “green steel industry”

Vietnam urged to march towards “green steel industry”.

Vietnamese steel manufacturers all say they are striving to have a “green steel industry”. However, this would mean higher production costs and lower competitiveness.

Vietnam still has not set up standards for energy, material and water consumption for manufacturing steel. Therefore, it would be very difficult for them to reduce the material, energy and water consumption, according to Pham Chi Cuong, Chair of the Vietnam Steel Association VSA. bv Big steal mills with modern technologies do not always mean the effective use of resources, because of the limitations of the labor force in accessing new technologies. The conclusion has been made by the experts of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and VSA after conducting a survey on the current situations of 18 steel enterprises. The lately surveyed enterprises include the subsidiaries of the Vietnam Steel Corporation, Vietnam-Italia Steel, Pomina, and Hoa Phat. According to Chu Duc Khai, an expert from UNIDO, in Vietnam, the steel consumption level is 140 kilos per capita, or tens times lower than that in South Korea, Japan, Czech and Italia. Therefore, there still more “room” for Vietnam to develop the steel industry. However, the survey has pointed out the weak competitiveness of Vietnam’s steel production, since the indexes about the steel laminating, electricity and electrode consumption and the volume of scrap steel needed to churn out one ton of steel is far below the average level in the world. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s productivity is also much lower than the world’s average level. Khai said that only three out of the 18 surveyed enterprises has the energy consumption level per one ton of ingot steel lying in the competitive range of the world – 1.6-2.4 GJ per ton.
Especially, an enterprise has found as consuming up to 300 kilos of coke coal to churn out one ton of laminating steel, which means the energy needed to create one ton of steel reaches 16 GJ, an overly high level. The enterprise also has high intensity of greenhouse gas emissions, about 1500 kilos of CO2 per ton of ingot steel, while the average level of the world is 900 kilos of CO2. Experts have also pointed out the relation between the enterprises’ ownership and the energy consumption level. Nine private enterprises were believed to consume least energy (less than 3 GJ per ton of steel), while state owned enterprises all consumed more than 3 GJ. Several months ago, the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) sent a report to the government, pointing out that the steel industry, which is now using backward technologies, are the biggest electricity consumers. With the report, steel mills have been considered as the main “culprit” behind the electricity shortage in Vietnam. Vietnam’s steel mills are believed to pay much attention to the production and environment protection. Especially, the efforts have been highly appreciated, when the steel mills have to face a lot of challenges, from the water and material price increases, and the higher requirements by people and management agencies on pollution control. However, the experts have found out that 50 percent of scrap steel grounds have not concretized, while solid wastes like cinder or dust have not been recycled for use. Inappropriate attention has been paid to the minimizing of persistent organic pollutants such as U-POP-dioxin/Furan/PCB. The key problem lies in the fact that many steel mills have small scale with the capacity of 200,000-500,000 tons per annum. Therefore, if the enterprises have to make heavy investments on the environment protection, the production costs would increase, while the sale prices would be not competitive. Khai has admitted that renovating technologies is really not an easy task, because this would require a huge capital. Therefore, the next step that needs to be done is to establish a “green industry group” in the steel industry which will be responsible for suggesting the solutions to reduce the material and energy consumption.