When will steel go green? How B.C. coal fuels one of the highest emitting industries in the world

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The calls from COP26 have been clear: the world must stop burning coal if it hopes to avoid catastrophic global temperature rise. 

So why then does British Columbia continue to be the Canadian leader in coal extraction and export? The answer: worldwide demand for steel continues to be sky high. 

Niney-five per cent of B.C. coal is metallurgical as opposed to thermal. Thermal coal is used to make steam that produces electricity. Metallurgical coal, or coking coal, is mined to produce the carbon used in steel-making and is shipped mostly to Asian countries for that purpose. 

In developing countries like China and India, where infrastructure like railways, roads, bridges and buildings is being built en masse, steel is crucial to continued growth. 

But just because B.C. doesn't produce and export thermal coal — which is nearly universally maligned for its high emissions — it doesn't mean we're not contributing to a massive amount of carbon emissions.

According to research organization Net Zero Steel, it's estimated that seven per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from manufacturing steel.

To make steel, oxygen must be removed from iron oxide. In order to do that, a fuel called coke is required, and that's made by heating metallurgical coal in a blast furnace. Iron ore reduction and the subsequent smelting process are by far the most carbon intensive aspects of steel-making.

According to the province's 2020 overview of the coal industry, production volumes were expected to be 25.1 million tonnes in 2020, down from 30 million tonnes in 2019.

Coal is easily B.C.'s most valuable mined product, with sales close to $4 billion.

In 2019, B.C. coal represented 48 per cent of all Canadian production. The provincial government says coal production employs thousands of people, mostly in the Elk Valley in southeastern B.C. and in the northeastern region of the province near Tumbler Ridge. 

Experts say there are a number of ways to lower emissions from steel-making, but perhaps the most promising possibility is the idea of removing metallurgical coal from the process altogether.

Clean hydrogen can be used instead to strip the oxygen from the iron ore.

"It's quite feasible that starting, say, five years from now, all new steel plants are using some version of this technology," said Chris Bataille, adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University and a lead author for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.