US Steel announces verdeX as sustainable steel brand

Pittsburgh-based United States Steel Corp. has announced it will attach the name verdeX to a steel product line tied to its “commitment to sustainable practices.”

“We know that the urgency of the climate crisis requires more from all of us,” says U.S. Steel president and CEO David B. Burritt. “So, we’re changing our portfolio of steelmaking technologies [and] creating something new—steels that are best for our customers and best for our planet.”

In a promotional video touting the new verdeX product line, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer Kenneth E. Jaycox says that while “steel lasts for generations,” that “only matters if the planet does too.”

The video is long on iconography (solar panels, windmills and electric vehicle charging stations), but short on product chemistry, facility origin or energy sources for the newly announced product line.

The promotional video, however, prominently mentions U.S. Steel’s recently acquired Big River Steel electric arc furnace (EAF) mill in Arkansas. After that acquisition closed in late 2020, U.S. Steel noted, “Big River Steel will increase the steel recycling intensity within U. S. Steel’s footprint” and “reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensity across [our] global footprint by 20 percent.”

The video also refers to the recycled-content steel produced by Big River in Arkansas as “the first LEED-certified steel in North America," referring to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building certification. 

Steel in the verdeX line will use less water and energy and lessens the steel’s carbon footprint [compared with some other steel] by up to 75 percent, according to the video script. In addition to using EAF technology—which is decades old and used by several steelmaking competitors—the script also refers to “lighter, smarter alloys” as a feature of the verdeX line.

“U.S. Steel is now capable of producing some of the most advanced high strength steels with only a quarter of the carbon dioxide emissions previously required,” states the company in a news release announcing the verdeX line. Adds the company, “Additional detail will be provided at www.ussteel.com in the coming weeks.”

The 10-minute promotional video created by U.S. Steel is embedded below.