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Opportunities for Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Mining Industry

The mining industry has a long-standing track record of innovation and working to improve efficiencies and provide a safer workplace that attracts and keeps skilled labour. With the exception of coal mining and passive coal-bed methane emissions, iron ore accounts for the largest proportion of Scope 3 carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the mining industry. These Scope 3 CO2 emissions from iron ore producers are largely the Scope 1 CO2 emissions of their steel mill customers. As such, the dilemma facing the iron ore miners is how best to work with their customers to reduce their CO2 emissions from the use of iron ore in steel production. In order for the steel industry to reduce CO2 emissions, two opportunities are presented and discussed: (1) increasing the use of ferrous scrap and direct-reduced iron in electric arc furnaces to replace the reduction of iron ore in basic oxygen furnaces using carbon reductants and (2) replacing the use of carbon as a reductant in steel production with hydrogen, which produces water vapour instead of CO2.