SDI pegs its GHG emissions level at half of North American average

In a late January presentation to investors, Fort Wayne, Indiana-electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaker Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) said at its six scrap-fed mills it emits 0.43 tons of CO₂ per ton of steel made. That would put it at less than half of the North American average of 1 ton and at less than one-third the global average of 1.7 tons.

“Our steelmaking operations already meet the 2050 intensity targets under the Paris Agreement and its 2 degrees Celsius scenario,” the company states in one of its presentation slides. “We are aligned with the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) as we plan for our steel mills to meet the SBTi 'well below 2 degrees Celsius' scenario target for combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity by at least 2030."

On the recycling front, SDI says its business units (which include scrap yard network OmniSource Corp.) “reintroduced 12 million tons of recycled ferrous scrap into the manufacturing life cycle” in 2021.

The company adds, “We reuse approximately 250 million pounds (125,000 tons) of scrap aluminum and 150 million pounds (75,000 tons) of scrap copper each year to produce certified aluminum alloys, copper rod and copper wire.” In addition to its EAF mills and scrap yards, SDI is a joint venture partner in Indiana-based secondary copper producer SDI LaFarga and operates secondary aluminum producer Superior Aluminum Alloys, also in Indiana.

In the same presentation, SDI listed as a “capital commitment” a figure of an “estimated $2.5 billion" to construct its recycled-content flat-rolled aluminum mill in Mississippi. That surpasses by $300 million its initial estimate to spend $2.2 billion on the project.

The plans for the Mississippi facility remain high-volume in nature. SDI says the facility will have the capacity to make 650,000 metric tons of flat-rolled aluminum and it is arranging a supply of 900,000 metric tons of recycled-content aluminum slabs to accompany it. The firm says “on-site capacity” will supply 70 percent of those slabs, with “the remainder supplied by two satellite recycled aluminum slab centers to be located in North Central Mexico and the southwestern United States.”

SDI adds, “Recycled aluminum will be the primary raw material and will be supplied through SDI’s recycling platform, OmniSource, which is the largest nonferrous metals recycler in North America.”

In 2022, SDI says its Metals Recycling business unit, consisting predominantly of OmniSource, had an operating income of $130 million, which was down from the record $195 million earned in 2021. The firm shipped about 527,000 tons of nonferrous scrap and 5.3 million tons of ferrous scrap. Of the ferrous scrap total, about two-thirds was shipped to SDI EAF mills.