Masdar, Emsteel find success with green steel pilot

Clean energy company Masdar and steelmaker Emsteel, both headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, have announced the successful completion of a pilot project using green hydrogen to produce green steel.

Based in Abu Dhabi, the pilot uses green hydrogen to extract iron from iron ore, a key step in steelmaking. The companies say the pilot now is fully operational and has successfully commenced the production of green steel.

Renewable hydrogen produced by the project has been certified by Avance Labs, the hydrogen code manager accredited by the International Tracking Standard Foundation, in accordance with the recently released ISO 19870 methodology for hydrogen. The certification data was validated by Bureau Veritas, acting as a third-party assurance provider.

Steel production is a very important industry in the UAE, the companies say. They add that since the steelmaking process can be carbon-intensive and hard to abate, the sector globally contributes between 7 percent to 8 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, making the decarbonization of the industry essential to pushing the world toward a net-zero future.

“Rising global demand for green steel presents huge growth potential for the UAE, as the country aspires to be a major green steel production hub,” the partners say in a news release. “The use of sustainable building materials, including steel, is being promoted through the National Green Certificates Program, launched by the UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure in July 2024.”

Masdar and Emsteel say their partnership has demonstrated the potential for green hydrogen to decarbonize the global steel value chain while demonstrating how clean energy and heavy industry partners in the UAE are collaborating and taking action to accelerate the energy transition.

“This project demonstrates world-class innovation as a result of our partnership with Emsteel to produce green steel utilizing green hydrogen,” Masdar CEO Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi says. “Decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries is vital to the global undertaking to achieve the objectives of the historic UAE Consensus agreed to at COP28. Green hydrogen is an essential element in advancing national and global decarbonization efforts and we are proud to be at the forefront of that endeavor.”

The companies say the pilot aligns with Abu Dhabi’s low-carbon hydrogen policy, which promotes low-carbon hydrogen as a future clean energy source, constituting a significant milestone toward ensuring economic growth, sustainability and energy security. The policy compliments the UAE National Hydrogen Strategy, which seeks to establish the UAE as a leading global producer of low-carbon hydrogen by 2031.

“We are committed to propelling decarbonization efforts in the sector, in support of the UAE’s Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative,” says Saeed Ghumran Al Remeithi, group CEO of Emsteel. “Our efforts to date have been fruitful, with our current utilization of clean energy sources rising above 80 percent in 2023. Emsteel is also the first steelmaker in the world to capture part of its CO₂ emissions, enabling us to operate with 45 percent less carbon intensity than the global average. Our partnership with Masdar will play a key role in continuing to build on our efforts to decarbonize this hard-to-abate sector and the downstream supply chain.”