Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Options in ISEEM Global Energy Model: 2010-2050 Scenario Analysis for Least-Cost Carbon Reduction in Iron and Steel Sector

Modeling technological change and its impact on energy savings in the U.S. iron and steel sector

“…The U.S. iron and steel sector model is based on our earlier studies [61,62] and contains 18 production technologies, including basic oxygen furnace (BOF) and electric-arc furnace (EAF). Because sintering, blast furnaces, BOFs, EAFs, and casting are mature technologies, no technological learning is considered for them.…”

“…Basic parameters and assumptions for the U.S. iron and steel production processes can be found in Karali et al [61,62] and for 14 energy-efficient technologies in Table A1 in Appendix A. Technology-specific learning rates and maximum penetration levels used in this study for existing energy-efficient technologies come from an earlier study by the authors, which calculates the learning rates of energy-efficient technologies used in the U.S. iron and steel sector [63]. For emerging technologies, we use the average learning rate from the same study for energy-efficient technologies that have penetration levels of 20% or below (i.e., learning rate of 10%).…”

Using learning curves on energy-efficient technologies to estimate future energy savings and emission reduction potentials in the U.S. iron and steel industry

“…We first develop a set of learning curves characterizing historical cost trends for 75 EE technologies (43 in the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) production route and 32 in the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) production route) currently in use in the U.S. iron and steel sector (Karali et al, 2013;Worrell et al, 1999;See Table B1 in Appendix B for the entire list). The cost associated with EE technologies represents the expense of retrofitting the existing production structure with an EE technology.…”

“…It is assumed that those technologies would be available in the model in each year with no additional cost. We adopted an annual energy efficiency improvement rate of 0.75%, which was applied in the ISEEM model of the U.S. iron and steel sector (Karali et al, 2013). EE technologies represent the existing and emerging (i.e.…”

“…For the annual projections of the steel production in the U.S. and more details on assumptions (such as energy and raw material prices, exogenous demand growth, production constraints, and so on) and calibration included in ISEEM modeling we refer the reader to Karali (2013). A discount rate of 10% is used and a lower bound on annual production from BOF route is set to 10% of the U.S. steel production capacity.…”