Here's how steel and cement could help turn climate change on its head

May 30, 2022

Steel generates around 8 per cent of global CO2 emissions. Image: Unsplash/yasin hm

Rana Ghoneim

Chief of the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Division, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

Gökçe Mete

Head of Secretariat, Founding Member, Leadership Group for the Industry Transition (LeadIT) and Women in Green Hydrogen Network

Anthony Hobley

Executive Director, Mission Possible Platform

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Climate Change is affecting economies, industries and global issues

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Climate Change

Listen to the article

A chart showing global greenhouse emissions by industry (2014)

Chemicals and plastics are one of the top greenhouse gas emitters (by industry) in 2014 Image: UNIDO/Rissman, J., Bataille, C., Masanet, E. et al., (2020).

A chart showing the share of global direct combustion and process CO2 emissions (2016)

The heat and electricity sector contributed more than double of what the iron and steel sector contributed Image: UNIDO/Bataille, C., (2019).

Two charts comparing CO2 emissions to material production (2020 to 2050)

Chemical and steel production can cause CO2 to be emitted Image: UNIDO/Maltais, A., Gardner, T., Godar, J., Lazarus, M., Mete, G., and Olsson, O. (2021).

Discover

What’s the World Economic Forum doing about climate change?

Have you read?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.