Environmental Impact Assessment Of China’s Iron And Steel Industry And Its Low-carbon Development Research

Since the21st century, China’s iron and steel industry develops rapidly, theproduction of crude steel achieves a sustained strong growth. However, thedisadvantages of extensive development mode of iron and steel industry isincreasingly exposed, high energy consumption and serious environmental pollutionhave become major factors which restricting the development of the iron and steelindustry. Iron and steel industry as a pillar industry in China, how to graduallytransform the pattern of economic growth, achieve coordination between industrialdevelopment and environment under the guidelines of “constructing a resource-savingand environment-friendly society”, is the focus that iron and steel industry sector eventhe country concerned most. Based on detailed analysis of the development situationof China’s iron and steel industry, this article firstly from the perspective of thesustainable development of iron and steel industry, uses life cycle assessment theoryand framework, and combines with iron and steel production process, to establish aproduction system life cycle inventory of steel products, and takes this to identify themain environmental impacts which restricting the development of China’s iron andsteel industry based on the life cycle assessment. Secondly, uses decoupling theory toresearch the relationship and its changing trend between the development of the ironand steel industry and the major environmental loads, explores the path of achievingharmonious development between economy and environment in iron and steelindustry.Result shows：（1）From2000to2010, the total environmental impact potential ofChina’s per ton steel production throughout the whole life cycle has been decreased,but the environmental impact potential of China’s iron and steel industry has beenincreasingly strengthened, during the last11years, it has enhanced by2.41times.Among them, greenhouse effect, energy consumption and resource consumption arethe mainly environmental impacts in the process of China’s iron and steel productionsystem, especially greenhouse effect and energy consumption have the most seriousimpact. Blast furnace, coking and sintering process are the most important proceduresamong the environmental impacts of iron and steel production（.2）From2000to2010,there exists a decoupling effects between Chinese steel industry’s energy consumptionand industrial development, as well as carbon emissions and industrial development, it is basically showing a stable weak decoupling state. The relationship between ironand steel industry’s energy consumption, carbon emissions and industrialdevelopment is consistent with the changes of the Environmental Kuznets Curve.（3）Energy efficiency, energy consumption structure and energy emission intensity areimportant factors which affect steel industry’s carbon emissions and industrialdevelopment to achieve the decoupling state. Where energy efficiency is the dominantfactor, energy emission intensity factor and energy structure factor’s influence arerelative not too large. However, in the long term, the inhibited effect of energyefficiency factor on carbon emissions is gradually weakening, so it needs to fulldisplay the energy structure and energy intensity factor’s inhibited effect on carbonemissions reduction of China’s iron and steel industry.