How steel industry made millions from climate crisis

Europe’s steel industry is in crisis again and there’s no shortage of reasons for all the financial losses and job cuts. Stagnating demand, surplus production capacity, higher iron ore prices and a surge in imports caused by trade conflicts are just some of them.
But when Tata Steel Ltd. announced 3,000 job losses at its European arm this week, the company also pointed to a “significant increase” in the cost of carbon emission permits.
Blaming the CO2 price has become a common yet questionable refrain in the industry. ArcelorMittal offered a similar excuse when it announced big production cuts in May. British Steel Ltd.’s collapse that same month was also linked to its obligation to purchase expensive carbon credits.
The reality looks rather different. Steel is responsible for about 7% of global emissions but even today the sector is mostly shielded from having to buy carbon pollution permits in Europe. Steelmakers are in a tight spot but they shouldn’t grumble about a policy that’s been lucrative for them in the past and whose purpose is to help them clean up their act.
To recap, the EU’s emission trading system was created more than a decade ago to help mitigate the climate crisis by making polluters pay. Utilities, industrial plants and airlines are required to obtain permits to match how much they pollute. The reason for the industry’s complaints now is that the cost of those allowances has more than trebled in the past two years after the European Union tweaked the system.
That’s theoretically difficult for steelmakers because they emit almost two metric tons of CO2 for every ton of steel produced. A roughly 50-euro ($55) CO2 price for each marginal ton of output is significant because the spread between steel prices and the cost of the raw materials needed to make it has fallen to about 250 euros a metric ton. “Considering that steel makers are barely profitable the pressure from CO2 prices is substantial,” says Benjamin Jones of CRU, a metals and mining consultancy.
Yet all the steelmakers’ complaints ignore an important financial safety net for the industry. Because of the perceived threat of so-called “carbon leakage” the least polluting steelmakers still receive free allowances that cover 100% of their emissions.
Furthermore, the production cuts after the 2008-2009 recession left steelmakers with large surpluses of emission permits which they were free to keep or sell at a profit. While the extent of the industry’s windfall profit from this is disputed, one study found it could be 8 billion euros ($8.8 billion). Some steelmakers are still benefiting today.
Tata Steel’s European arm generated 211 million pounds ($273 million) of income from selling surplus allowances in the fiscal year to March, its annual accounts show. It’s pretty bold of the steelmaker to call out the rising cost of pollution permits when it’s just booked a big profit from them.
“The European steel sector is in a tough spot but to blame carbon pricing is disingenuous,” says Sam Van den plas, policy director at Carbon Market Watch. For now the largest and most technically advanced steelmakers probably aren’t having to fork out much for allowances.
This will change gradually after 2021 when the so-called fourth phase of emissions trading begins. But the EU still expects to hand out 6.3 billion free permits to polluters during that period, worth more than 150 billion euros at current prices.
Emission cuts by companies bound by the EU trading system have been fairly impressive but recent progress has come mostly from the power sector. That makes the bloc’s task of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 — something ThyssenKrupp and others have signed up to — more difficult. Excluding power plants, the largest individual sources of carbon pollution in Europe are all steelworks.
In fairness, there’s an absence of carbon-cutting technologies in sectors like steel and cement. Techniques such as replacing coal with hydrogen in steel production show promise but most are still being trialled. Making them viable commercially would require a higher carbon price and massive investments, including on huge new sources of renewable electricity.
Naturally the steelmakers think a border tax is a great idea as it would expose them to less competition by deflecting “dirty” imports. Astonishingly, they’re lobbying to keep their free pollution allowances even if non-EU steelmakers are forced to pay the bloc’s carbon price. The local industry argues that its non-EU exports would become uncompetitive if it had to pay the full cost of permits while investing in emission-cutting innovations. Its lobbying sounds dangerously like an industry trying to have its cake and eat it.

—Bloomberg

Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies. He previously worked for the Financial Times