The steel industry accounts for roughly 8 per cent of global CO2 emissions linked to energy consumption, according to International Energy Agency data cited by Primetals Technologies CTO Alexander Fleischanderl. The figure anchors his argument that carbon capture is the entry point, not the destination, for industrial decarbonisation.

What does Fleischanderl mean by "just the beginning"?

Carbon capture removes the molecule, but every step after that is its own engineering and commercial problem. Fleischanderl, who also heads Primetals' Green Steel division, told IndexBox that captured CO2 must be purified, compressed, transported, stored or converted into sellable products.

"The steel industry cannot resolve this challenge alone," he said. Each downstream stage depends on infrastructure, regulation, capital and committed offtakers willing to buy captured carbon at industrial scale.

Why do blast furnaces stay in the mix?

Direct hydrogen-based reduction is the long-term anchor of low-emission steel. But the existing asset base will not disappear on that timeline. Blast furnaces carry operating lives measured in decades, and the capital already sunk in them forecloses near-term replacement.

Fleischanderl positions energy efficiency, electrification, hydrogen and carbon capture as parallel tools rather than competing technologies. Carbon capture is not a hydrogen substitute; it is a parallel route for cutting emissions while the broader energy transition builds momentum.

What role does carbon play after it leaves the stack?

Chemical firms can turn CO2 into methanol or urea for fertilisers. Fuel producers are pursuing synthetic aviation and marine fuels. Enhanced oil recovery remains an outlet, while geological storage is the fallback where no commercial use exists.

Most of these routes also require large volumes of renewable electricity or hydrogen. The regional power and hydrogen economy therefore sets the ceiling for capture projects, regardless of the capture technology itself.

How does the Steelanol project at ArcelorMittal Ghent prove the model?

The Belgian plant is now fully operational. Blast furnace gases pass through a carbon-to-ethanol conversion developed with Primetals Technologies, LanzaTech and E4tech/ERM. The facility produces up to 80 million litres of advanced ethanol a year.

It cuts the site's CO2 emissions by approximately 125,000 tonnes annually. The unit turns a vent stream into a saleable chemical, showing captured carbon moving from a waste line into the value chain rather than a flue.

What other projects are testing the same logic?

Mining major Rio Tinto has begun testing a pilot-scale carbon dioxide capture facility at a steel plant operated by China's Shougang Group. The project sits at a smaller scale than Steelanol and signals a second mover outside Europe.

Both ventures depend on the same downstream ecosystem: offtake contracts, transport corridors and stable carbon pricing. Without those three, the captured molecule remains stranded and the capture unit becomes an expensive stack-end treatment.

What organisational shift does the transition require?

Steel industry representatives have moved past their own trade associations. They now sit at the same table as chemical companies, utility firms, cement manufacturers and infrastructure operators.

Fleischanderl points to this cross-sector choreography as the real change underway. Captured carbon, process gases and waste heat are repositioning the steelworks as a node in an industrial cluster rather than a standalone asset.

What decides whether the build-out accelerates?

Three milestones will test the thesis. LanzaTech's commercial offtake pipeline beyond Ghent would prove other buyers will pay for steel-derived ethanol at scale. Performance data from the Rio Tinto–Shougang pilot will show whether Asian mills can replicate the European model.

Regulators will set the terms for CO2 transport pipelines, geological storage permitting and renewable-power allocation to electrolysis. Each of those decisions determines whether the Ghent model becomes a template for the sector or remains a one-off showcase.