The steel industry contributes 10-12% to India’s total emissions.
The Steel Ministry is actively engaging with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MoNRE) to decarbonise the steel industry. MoNRE aims to expand green hydrogen usage in steel-making under its “National Green Hydrogen Mission” and as part of the mission, the steel ministry has been allocated ₹455 crore till FY2029-30 to implement pilot projects.
To reduce India’s dependence on speciality steel imports, the government introduced PLI for speciality steel.
Under the PLI for speciality steel participating companies have committed to an investment of ₹ 27,106 crore and an estimated production of 7.90 million tonnes of ‘Specialty Steel’ is expected. “As of October 2024, companies have already invested ₹17,581 crore and generated over 8,660 in employment,” the note reads. Although sufficient reserve of iron ore and non-coking coal exists, coking coal or low-ash coal imports has been steadily rising with the import of 51.20 MMT in 2020-21, 57.16 MMT in 2021-22, 56.05 MMT in 2022-23, 58.12 MMT in 2023-24 coking coal and 30.19 MMT in 2024-25 for the period Apr’24 – Sep’24.
Australia is the biggest coking coal supplier to India but India is slowly diversifying its coking coal imports, with Russia’s share in India’s coking coal imports increasing over the last three financial years.
