In September 2023, Nippon Steel Corporation plans to start selling NS Carbolex Neutral, a steel product with low CO2 emissions at the production stage.

NS Carbolex Neutral is offered using the mass balance method, whereby CO2 emission reductions in the company’s production process are allocated to specific steel products, which are then regarded as low-CO2 steel products. The current method of reducing iron ore (iron oxide) with coal produces CO2 emissions, so it is necessary to build a reduction method that does not produce CO2 emissions, but it is difficult to replace it entirely immediately in terms of cost and technology. For the time being, while promoting low-CO2 emissions with steel produced by the mass balance method, we have to wait for the conversion from blast furnaces to electric furnaces, which are CO2 emission-less and CO2 emission-less.

However, it is estimated that several trillion yen of investment will be required to do these things, and it will be necessary to take the difficult nibble of acquiring funds for the investment while increasing the share of low-CO2 steel sales, which are more expensive than ordinary steel products.