Ministry of Industry “We will promote large-scale R&D to develop new processes for reducing carbon emissions such as hydrogen reduction steel.”
[세종=아시아경제 주상돈 기자] The government decided to promote large-scale research and development (R&D) on new industrial processes such as’Hydrogen Reduction Steel’, which uses hydrogen instead of coal as a reducing agent in the steel smelting process to fundamentally reduce carbon emissions. It is expected to start planning the preliminary feasibility study project in earnest, seeing that more than 30 billion won is needed.
On the 9th, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy held the ‘4th working-level meeting of the Carbon Neutral Industrial Transformation Promotion Committee’ in which 13 industry associations, including Kim Young-ju, executive director of the Steel Association, attended and discuss the contents. At this meeting, the Ministry of Industry will present the direction for promoting carbon reduction technology development at a working-level meeting.
First of all, the Ministry of Industry, considering that large-scale R&D is necessary to fundamentally reduce carbon emissions, and plans to start planning preliminary projects in earnest. This is because the development of new industrial processes such as hydrogen reduction steel and electric heating naphtha cracking process, which are completely different from the past in the multi-emission industries such as steel, petrochemical, cement, semiconductor and display, is inevitable.
In order to achieve GHG reduction results within a short period of time, it is necessary to promote efficiency improvement and process management advancement technology development with a sense of speed, so we plan to actively discover related tasks and invest as much as possible from 2022. In addition, for industries such as automobiles, shipbuilding, and machinery that generate carbon in the process of use rather than the product production process, the company will focus on fostering items directly connected to the reduction of fossil fuel use, such as electric and hydrogen vehicles and eco-friendly ships.
Young-jin Jang, head of the Industrial Innovation Division of the Ministry of Industry, said, “Considering that the realization of 2050 carbon neutrality is the only solution to the development of innovative technologies, we will try to increase the budget for new industrial process carbon neutral R&D projects in 2022.” The process of doing so can be both a crisis and an opportunity for companies, so the Ministry of Industry’s industrial process R&D investment reinforcement policy is expected to be a solution to strengthen our company’s competitiveness and lead our country to an industrial powerhouse.”
Reporter Joo Sang-don [email protected]