Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and EMSTEEL, the UAE’s largest publicly listed steel and building materials company, announced the successful completion of a pilot project demonstrating the use of green hydrogen to produce green steel.
The Abu Dhabi-based pilot project, which the company claimed as the first-of-its-kind in the Middle East and North African region, uses green hydrogen to extract iron from iron ore, a key step in steelmaking.
The pilot project is now fully operational and has successfully commenced the production of green steel, the company said.
The renewable hydrogen produced by the project has been certified by Avance Labs, the hydrogen code manager accredited by the International Tracking Standard Foundation, in accordance with the recently released ISO 19870 methodology for hydrogen, it added.
With steel production being a highly carbon-intensive process, there has been a growing trend to decarbonise the industry.
Rising global demand for green steel presents huge growth potential for the UAE, as the country aspires to be a major green steel production hub.
“The partnership between Masdar and EMSTEEL has demonstrated the potential for green hydrogen to decarbonise the global steel value chain, whilst demonstrating how clean energy and heavy industry partners in the UAE are collaborating and taking urgent action to accelerate the energy transition,” the company said.
Masdar Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, said decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industries is vital to the global undertaking to achieve the objectives of the historic UAE Consensus agreed at COP28.
“Green hydrogen is an essential element in advancing national and global decarbonisation efforts and we are proud to be at the forefront of that endeavour,” he said.
Saeed Ghumran Al Remeithi, Group Chief Executive Officer of EMSTEEL, said the company’s partnership with Masdar will play a key role in continuing to build on its efforts to decarbonise this hard-to-abate sector and the downstream supply chain.
The pilot project aligns with Abu Dhabi’s Low Carbon Hydrogen Policy which promotes low-carbon hydrogen as a future clean energy source, constituting a significant milestone towards ensuring economic growth, sustainability, and energy security and a strategic step towards a sustainable future.
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