The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the international non-profit organization defending the environment and wildlife conservation, has published a study concerning the decarbonization of Italian steel sector and how CO2 emissions can be reduced in the process of steelmaking, in cooperation with the Italian University of Trieste. WWF and the University of Trieste have hypothesized three different scenarios: conservative, perspectival and desirable.
In the conservative scenario, coal would be replaced by gas in all steelmaking processes, and carbon capture and re-use would be introduced. In this way, carbon emissions would be reduced by 53.37 percent by 2050, and the annual investment required would amount to €1.478 billion.
In the perspectival scenario, the introduction of new technologies such as DRI based on natural gas and biomethane would add up to carbon capture and re-use. In this second scenario, emissions would be cut by 67.85 percent by 2050 and the annual investment required would amount to €1.845 billion.
In the desirable scenario, DRI technology would be based on the utilization of green hydrogen, thus eliminating fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable resources. In this last scenario, carbon emissions would be reduced by 67.84 percent by 2050 and the annual investment required would amount to €1.386 billion.