Hyundai faces turning point on sustainability with new US steel mill
Hyundai just announced a $6B investment in a new ‘low carbon’ integrated steel mill in Louisiana. But local community groups and national and international environmental organizations are questioning whether the facility will contribute to pollution in the already heavily burdened ‘Cancer Alley’ region, and are calling on Hyundai to commit to steelmaking practices that protect air quality and minimize carbon emissions.
Hyundai’s announcement that the facility will use direct-reduction ironmaking and electric arc furnace technology signals a commitment to lower-carbon steel production – and demonstrates that auto grade-steel doesn’t need to rely on polluting blast furnaces.
But Hyundai chairman Chung Eui-sun announced at an event at the White House that the company will purchase liquified natural gas to supply the plant. Hyundai also failed to commit to renewable energy as the electricity source for the electric arc furnace in the steel making process.
The company has the ability to demonstrate leadership by transitioning to green hydrogen and renewable energy—Louisiana already has a well-established hydrogen industry, and several green hydrogen projects have been announced in the state—which would ensure significantly lower air pollution and near-zero carbon emissions. Hyundai can also take the opportunity to reassert the importance of green jobs being good jobs, by ensuring a safe working environment with fair wages and respect for workers’ rights - a commitment that is badly needed after recent reports that over 91 calls were made to 911 from Hyundai’s Georgia megaplant between January 2023 and August 2024.
If Hyundai chooses the high road for its new steel facility, Louisiana communities could benefit from over 1,000 new good jobs at a world-class H2-DRI-EAF facility that produces clean steel and accelerates the clean energy transition.
A steel mill powered by polluting, dangerous fossil fuels will only serve to deepen the public health crisis in Cancer Alley.
In the wake of the EU auto recycling cartel ruling, new research proves that automotive grade steel can be produced from recycled scrap steel
The conventional wisdom in the auto industry and industrial decarbonization spaces has long been that automotive grade steel cannot be produced with recycled scrap steel. But recent news about ‘cartel’ behavior to avoid recycling vehicles from automakers, and a growing body of evidence from researchers, demonstrates significant potential to build a circular supply chain for cars, including automotive steel.
Fifteen automakers were fined almost half a billion dollars last week by EU and UK regulators for engaging in what regulators called a ‘cartel’ designed to avoid responsibility for recycling end-of-life vehicles. According to the Financial Times, automakers “coordinated their position by refusing to pay car dismantlers for recycling ‘end of life’ vehicles” as well as coordinating their marketing claims about recycled content and how recyclable their vehicles were.
It appears that the auto industry itself is at least partially responsible for promoting the false narrative that automotive grade steel can’t be made from recycled materials.
Steelwatch challenged this misconception just a few months ago with a mythbusting piece explaining why automakers no longer need to rely on coal-fired blast furnaces to produce automotive grade steel. Now three groundbreaking new studies have been released in quick succession, demonstrating the huge potential for increasing the recycled content of automotive steel.
The study from Sandbag looks at the environmental and safety challenges inherent in modern automotive steel design, and proposes a minimum recycled steel content target for passenger cars along with solutions to make it possible including:
♻️ Making specific recycling targets for ICE vehicles vs EVs, because they use use different amounts of long steel.
⚖️ Consider lightweighting strategies, which minimize materials while maximizing their strength and utility, through use of High-Strength Steels (HSS) and Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS).
🔧 Limiting copper contamination by removing motors and electronics before shredding.
And the Mobility in Transition Institute released “Car-to-car Steel,” assessing the effectiveness of utilizing ELV deep-dismantling with enhanced copper removal in order to improve scrap quality to necessary levels for reintegration into the supply chain. Their findings show that:
⛑️ Manual (or manually assisted) dismantling operations can produce steel scrap of sufficient quality to be considered as part of the raw material mix for the production of automotive high-grade flat steel in electric arc furnaces.
💲 The value of recovered copper wire offsets the additional cost of in-depth wire extraction.
They are recommending that the new EU end-of-life directive includes the creation of a new high-quality steel scrap standard (E40+) as an economic incentive to reward better steel recycling practices among automakers.
The ICCT also just released a policy brief exploring strategies to incentivize a more circular use of automotive steel in the EU. According to the ICCT, automakers and policy makers should:
🚘 Improve collection of vehicles at end of life.
🏭 Prevent quality loss of automotive steel and improve steel circularity through better copper separation from steel, either during dismantling or after the shredding process.
♻️ Designing vehicles to facilitate easier recycling.
🇪🇺 Requiring that new vehicles sold in the European Union meet a recycled steel content target.
The EU is currently debating provisions on recycled steel content in autos as part of the discussions over the soon to be finalized end-of-life vehicles (ELV) directive. With just small policy changes, policymakers can support automakers in increasing the share of recycled steel in auto supply chains, reducing the need for new mining and minimizing air and climate pollution. T&E just released a study on the feasibility of including recycled steel targets in the ELV directive, and concluded that including steel recycled content targets of 30% in 2030 and 40% in 2035 in the ELV is both technically and economically feasible.
Automakers can—and will need to—rise to the challenge of building a more circular steel supply chain in order to maintain market access in the EU. In the wake of this damning ruling from EU and UK regulators on the auto recycling cartel, we hope to see automakers design new models with recycling in mind, participate in take-back schemes, and take responsibility for the products they create when those products reach the end of their useful life.
What Lead the Charge Members Are Reading This Week
CALSTART is inviting automakers to complete this short survey to help emerging green steelmakers better understand how to tailor their offerings.
The New York Times reports that new US tariffs are already idling auto factories.
With #TeslaTakedown sweeping the globe, EV consumers are asking: what’s the more ethical alternative? According to Mighty Earth, it’s not Hyundai, which has a track record of prioritizing corporate greed over climate and public health.
According to a new report from E3G and Beyond Fossil Fuels, 2025 is THE YEAR for the EU to advance policies to drive the European steel industry’s transition. “The State of the European Steel Transition” finds that the industry is at a crossroads but that “there is a clear pathway to green steel.”
Over 1000 battery workers in Tennessee represented by the UAW just signed their first union contract.
Don’t miss Galina Angarova, executive director of SIRGE Coalition, sharing Indigenous-led solutions to problems in the mineral supply chain with TedxLondon’s Climate Curious podcast.
CALSTART’s Jon Gordon and Industrious Labs’ Mari Gutierrez wrote for Automotive News about how forward-thinking industrial policies at the state and federal level can incentivize steelmakers to reinvest in communities and cutting-edge manufacturing, instead of stock buybacks and executive bonuses.
The 2025 Lead the Charge Leaderboard was featured on the Kilowatt podcast with guests Vuyisile Ncube of Earthworks and Mighty Earth founder Glenn Hurowitz. Listen to learn more about Indigenous Rights in the auto supply chain and the environmental impacts of industries like steel and aluminum.
As European automakers react to the bankruptcy of Northvolt, we’re reflecting on what Julia Poliscanova of T&E has to say about the fall of one of Europe’s leading battery companies.
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RMI, the World Economic Forum and the Global Battery Alliance have 5 new recommendations for automakers and policymakers to foster battery circularity:
📋 Create track-and-trace platforms (like Volvo’s battery passport initiative.)
🔬 Setting performance and data standards and financing R&D for design innovation that prioritizes disassembly and recyclability.
♻️ Policy interventions to help overcome economic and technical barriers faced in recycling and second life.
🌏 Developing regional, circular value chains within a global circular economy, and facilitating responsible cross-border movement of batteries and battery materials.
👷 Investing in the workforce needed for a circular battery economy by training and reskilling for circular jobs, integrating and preventing development of informal markets, and prioritizing principles of just transition.
New research published in Environmental Research Letters and covered by HeatMap projects that 40% of global economic output will be lost to climate change by the end of the century.
Jobs at British Steel are at risk due to negotiations over steel transition between the UK government and the Jingye Group.