GRSG 35th Conference 2024 Abstract

Title: Testing and fine tuning of literature satellite-driven indicators to investigate Iron and Steel Factories

Author: Carlo Robiati

Organisation: DBX Ltd

Europe’s iron and steel manufacturing industry represents a key backbone of the territory’s industrial landscape. Despite its valuable contribution in the economic domain, the iron and steel industry is one of the largest industrial emitters of CO2 accounting for about 5% of the EU’s total emissions. The significant implications for human health, climate change, balance of both land surface energy and urban ecosystem require improved policies to speed its decarbonization in line with net zero. In this transition period, data on the iron and steel manufacturing industry is particularly opaque and elusive. knowing production and consumption data is lacking, and when available, it reaches analysts and public audiences with months of delay.

In this context, the need to develop an independent monitoring system based on scientific evidence becomes increasingly prominent. The SPECTRUM (Satellite Power Emission Control: Tracking Resource Utilization and Manufacturing) project, managed by the DBX Commodities, and financed by ESA Business Applications and Solutions, works in this direction, aiming at satisfying a double-side request.

The markets need accurate and site-specific information on steel/iron production and consumption. Such information is indeed of great commercial value to organizations involved in trading the commodities produced by those industries, and more widely within the investment houses trading in some of the world’s most valuable companies that operate in these industries. The Earth Observation community serving for climate change purposes is deeply interested in quantifying and monitoring the Greenhouse Gas emissions from these targets, to track the adherence to 2015 Paris agreement.

Satellite-driven products have demonstrated their potential in providing independent and accurate information on thermal activities, like the ones related to gas flaring or industrial combustion.

This work puts in evidence the preliminary findings provided by the scheduled methodological approach based on the fine tuning of literature satellite-driven indices, using multi-spectral observations to detect and monitor steel industrial activities from space. In detail, preliminary findings for four test sites managed by ArcelorMittal and located in Asturias/Spain (i.e., Gijon and Aviles) and France (i.e., Dunkerque and Fos sur Mer) will be shown and discussed.
Policymakers could use these data to enhance the effectiveness of energy-intensive industry management strategies and realize better health and environmental impact assessment. Markets may benefit to them to better report/project steel market size, share, growth and trends.