Fig. 2: Development of steel production capacities per technology in South Africa over time, up until 2050, for all four scenarios.
From: Strategising steel sector capacities and employment in the Global South: the case of South Africa
DRI capacities are separated from BF-BOF and EAF steelmaking to reflect the opportunity of splitting the value chain in order to export low-carbon DRI directly. The results indicate a robust decline of fossil steel capacities in favour of EAF and H2-DRI capacities, regardless of demand and emissions target assumptions. For the domestic market in particular, EAFs fully replace BF-BOFs as the dominant steelmaking technology by mid-century. Under high demand, this is primarily driven by the synergetic ramp-up of H2-DRI capacities, which are required to meet export demand in any case, but can also be used to feed into downstream EAF steelmaking. During the transition (2030–2040), DRI-coal and DRI-NG are used as bridging technologies until sufficient cost-effective H2 is available, particularly when the rest of the economy also decarbonises swiftly and competition for low-carbon energy is high (2 ∘C HDS). In low-demand scenarios, the shift is more gradual and stems from a combination of modest DRI expansion and steady steel recycling rates over time.
