We have joined forces with EIT RawMaterials to launch a global innovation challenge aimed at driving the steelmaking sector’s decarbonisation.

Global population growth will come hand-in-hand with greater demand for minerals and metals; core ingredients for the critical materials that are essential for modern society. One of those is steel, the world’s most important engineering and construction material.

As the steelmaking industry is currently responsible for around 8% of global carbon emissions¹, there is a pressing need to develop and commercialise new low-CO₂ technologies within the next 5-10 years to meet climate targets.

With a significant proportion of Anglo American’s Scope 3 emissions resulting from the downstream use of iron ore and steelmaking coal, key ingredients to steelmaking processes, we are keenly supporting these efforts. Most recently, we have joined forces with EIT RawMaterials to launch a global innovation challenge focused on accelerating the steelmaking sector’s decarbonisation.

The challenge aims to identify unique technologies with the potential to drive positive change across several focus areas, including:

• Mining: The beneficiation of iron ore feeds for use in Direct-Reduced Iron (DRI) processes
• Pre-processing: Reducing or removing carbon emissions in existing pre-processing stages such as sintering and induration
• Production: The use of Advance Blast Furnace (ABF) technologies, DRI-Electric Arc Furnace processes, or alternative steelmaking technologies
• Recycling: Enabling increased use of scrap metal feedstock in high quality flat steel production
• Post-processing: The use of carbon-capture utilisation or sequestration solutions to meet the scale of blast furnace carbon emissions

Key assessment criteria include how innovative a technology is, as well as its cost competitiveness and potential impact². All submissions – whether from start-ups, teams keen to spin-out of research centres, or other private entities – will be assessed by Anglo American’s Decarbonisation Ventures team for potential venture capital investment.

Benny Oeyen, Anglo American’s Executive Head, Market Development, said: “At Anglo American, we are committed to creating, accelerating and investing in climate positive start-ups as part of our purpose of re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives. We are looking not only at how we decarbonise our own operations, but also at how we can reduce the emissions of our broader value chain.

“Building on our track record of supporting promising innovations across a range of emerging technology spaces, we look forward to reviewing the challenge submissions and leveraging our expertise, scale and network to identify ideas with potential, and support their growth.”

Bernd Schäfer, CEO, EIT RawMaterials, said: “It is the mandate of EIT RawMaterials’ to drive innovation to decarbonise the raw materials sector, from mining to recycling, but it takes a global village and great industry leadership and collaboration to look beyond their own boundaries to solve solutions for the greater good – that is, to address the challenges of climate change.

“EIT RawMaterials, Europe’s leading raw materials network is proud to lead this initiative with Anglo American, and by doing so we hope this global Open Innovation Challenge will set a new benchmark for others to persist in finding bold and creative ways to engage with the world’s best innovators to solve our most pressing industry decarbonisation challenges.”

Anglo American will provide selected companies with access to a range of internal technical and commercial experts to support their scale-up journey. The nature of this advice will depend on what those companies require to meet their commercialisation milestones.

Beyond this internal expertise, we will also draw on the strength of our global partner and customer networks to support ventures’ product development.

The Challenge will be open until 22 May 2023 with submissions to be made through a dedicated portal. As this date nears, Anglo American’s Decarbonisation Ventures team will begin engaging with select companies, some of which may be invited to pitch their submissions to the team later in the year.

Anglo American has been involved in venturing for about a decade, including co-founding AP Ventures, an investment fund focused on developing high growth technology companies across the hydrogen value chain, co-founding start-ups such as Mission Zero Technologies and Supercritical, and helping to grow other cleantech businesses such as First Mode. Building on these efforts, the Decarbonisation Ventures team – formed in 2021 – has the goal of supporting climate positive innovations for rapid and sustainable decarbonisation, through investments and global commercial partnerships.

Lina Arbelaez, Head of Decarbonisation Ventures at Anglo American, said: “Reducing emissions in steel production is vital to meeting climate change targets. There are several pathways, from green hydrogen to carbon capture, utilisation and storage, all of which have promise and all of which face bottlenecks – whether due to a lack of innovation or technological maturity – to the high levels of investment needed to untap their potential.

“With technology commercialisation a high-risk endeavour, companies tend to prefer to invest in solutions that are proven. While we too value those opportunities, we also recognise that the scale of the challenge means consideration must also be given to breakthroughs at earlier technology readiness levels. This is what we hope to achieve through this challenge and our partnership with the EIT – a major actor in Europe’s ongoing transition.

“As the Decarbonisation Ventures team, we now look forward to tapping into some great ideas, and to meeting the people, universities and research centres working in this space. This represents a great opportunity for us to step up our pace, accelerate the loop of innovation and realise the full potential of the steelmaking industry’s decarbonisation journey.”

Since its formation, the team has invested in start-ups including Helios, Limelight Steel and Maxterial. To learn more about Decarbonisation Ventures and its work, click here.

To learn more about the challenge, click here.

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¹ ‘Decarbonization challenge for steel’; C. Hoffmann, M. Van Hoey and B. Zeumer; McKinsey & Company, 3 June 2020, https://mck.co/3Fbtup8

² ‘Impactful’ means solutions with the potential to remove upwards of 0.2t CO₂ per ton of steel produced.