The world consumes a lot of steel and that process
releases lots of planet warming gasses more than all of
India does every year. The process of making steel
hasn't changed all that much in thousands of years.
Basically, it works by burning cobs of coal with
iron ore dug up from mines. Iron ore is
mainly iron atoms attached to oxygen atoms. The violent
chemical reaction uses carbon from coal to remove that unwanted
oxygen. Releasing iron metal. All the while making
billions of tons of carbon dioxide tackling climate change requires
getting to zero emissions. That means cutting out emissions
from the steel industry altogether. A new Colorado based
start up called Electra claims to have found a solution
. Its process does not use any coal at all
. Instead it uses renewable electricity from solar panels or
wind turbines and powers the removal of oxygen from iron
ore using only electricity and it can run that reaction
at a temperature cooler than the water needed to make
your coffee. The process can work whenever the sun
shines or the windows rather than the 24 7 that
steel plants have to run today. But electron only
makes carbon free iron. There's still an extra step
involved where very small amounts of other metals and some
carbon needs to be added to iron to make the
many different kinds of steel the world consumes still electra
solution cuts 90% of the emissions in making steel.
The startup is only two years old and it has
lots of work ahead of it. It needs to
prove that its process can work at scale, producing
billions of tons of steel that the world consumes today
. And it has competition in other startups and major
steel companies that want to use green electricity or green
hydrogen to do the same job without carbon emissions.
Nonetheless, Electra's innovative route is a massive step in
the right direction. I'm Akha Rati. This is
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