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In addition progress making steel with a lot less CO2, by using hydrogen (and other techniques) instead of coal has come a long way. This isn't just pie in the
by entropicgravity 5y ago
In addition progress making steel with a lot less CO2, by using hydrogen (and other techniques) instead of coal has come a long way. This isn't just pie in the sky, the world's second largest steel maker plans to reduce CO2 by 30% before 2030. [1] And of course steel is eminently recyclable. I'm not against wood but steel has some good long term attributes as well.
[1]https://corporate.arcelormittal.com/sustainability/climate-action-in-europe https://corporate.arcelormittal.com/sustainability/climate-a...
- boplicity 5y agoSteel production is one of the largest contributors to global C02 emissions. Reducing it by 30% isn't a solution. Unfortunately, zero-carbon-emissions steel is still not feasibile, which is a major, major issue for the health of our planet.
- elzbardico 5y agoWe have to start somewhere don’t we?
- boplicity 5y agoYes -- but it's not a start unless we're making zero-emissions steel possible. Otherwise, it's just more of the same. (Akin to stabbing someone with a 30% smaller knife.)
- gonzo41 5y agoYou can also coke iron with carbon from plastic. It's still not super great. But it does reuse plastics which don't get recycled enough.
- danuker 5y agoReminds me of "Plasteel" from RimWorld.
- XorNot 5y agoReusing plastics is honestly one of those "do we need to" things these days. The theory is that if we reuse them, then the waste doesn't pollute the environment - but landfilled plastic waste is basically sequestered carbon, and plastic pollution is ocean-borne and mostly being directly produced by poor environmental practice - not unrecycled plastic waste or landfill escape.
- gonzo41 5y agoYeah I agree, I'm pretty pro, bury plastic in the ground, but I figure if we need to coke steel rather than digging up coal we can just divert a few trucks.
- gremloni 5y agoYeah seriously, bury the plastic really deep away from water tables and forget about it. We clearly can’t recycle most of the stuff. Couple that with moving away from a frivolous use of plastic and I think we are golden. There are a bunch of abandoned mines miles away from substantial water tables. Fill those up.
- politician 5y agoWe can’t figure out how to store a minimal quantity of radioactive waste in a purpose-built salt mine dozens of miles away from any small town. I have no faith that we can find places to store megatons of plastic waste.
- potatoman22 5y agoPlastic doesn't radiate.
- politician 5y agoNIMBY neighbors don’t compromise.
- 5y ago
- contravariant 5y agoI suppose it solves littering but in the end you're still just burning plastics and turning them into CO2, which isn't great.
- huntertwo 5y agoHow do they make hydrogen clean? 95% of hydrogen comes from burning fossil fuels. I doubt they're going through electrolysis to make the hydrogen or sourcing it from a supplier that does.
- ehnto 5y agoIt's part of the ongoing process, we can't skip to the final step. I think it is fair to rely on electricity and assume it will at least one day be green when thinking about green processes in totality, since some places are already generating green electricity. In my city we have a hydrogen plant powered mostly y solar that is feeding the steel mill, and this is just the beginning of exploring this process so it is bound to get more efficient.
- tiluha 5y agoThe variable nature of most renewable energy sources might make hydrogen produced by electrolysis cheap enough