A Study of Energy Efficiency in the Indian Iron and Steel Industry

Indian industrial sectors such as Iron & Steel and Cement manufacture products for equitable growth but at the same time consume huge amounts of energy. India’s total final energy consumption was estimated at 449.27Mtoe of which the industrial sectors consumed about 30%. The Iron & Steel sector is one of the most energy-intensive manufacturing industries, consuming about 25% of the total industrial energy consumption (1). The total GHG emissions in India were assessed at 1904.73 MtCO2, and 38% (719.31 MtCO2) and 22% (412.55 MtCO2) were from electricity generation and industry sectors respectively. The Indian Iron and Steel sector contributed to about 117.32 MtCO2 or 6.2%.

 Barriers and Challenges in the Indian Steel & Ferro Alloy Industry

The Indian iron and steel industry has been working consistently and contributing to the infrastructure development and economic growth of the country in the face of several barriers and challenges. Some of these can be summarised as follows:

• Availability of raw materials such as ores and coal resources
• Supply chain and associated infrastructure (roadways and railways)
• Variation in the international prices
• Land acquisition and grant of environment clearance
• Techno-economics, and production efficiency benchmark in compliance with international standards
• Sustaining in a competitive environment due to global trade agreements
• Reckonable restrictions and high tariff barriers
• Non-availability of high grade ore in India and availability of raw material linkages
• Non-availability of low ash, low phosphorous coking coal in the country for the production of desired coke necessitating the import of such coke at a high cost

To overcome these challenges, suitable economic policy framework needs to be formulated to facilitate continuous up gradation to best available technology, adoption of energy saving measures with the focus from specific national policy mechanisms such as PAT (40)