It is a nice sunny day of summer.  About 200 meters east of the Shagang administration district, a large green leisure ground, the “elevated garden” of Shagang, in a forest of steel and concrete, enters into the eyes.  With some steps upwards, kids are having funs on the lawn or around the flowers, while elders are chatting or walking under trees. 

Shagang is an extra-large steel producer with an annual throughput of 40 million tons. It is a big topic to find a harmonized co-existence with the community and ecological environment. With the general development strategy “Driven by innovation and Environment preservation prevailing over the others”, Shagang is determined to implement its “establishing a base for prime products and building a green steel city” program. Aiming at the “Double Carbon targets” Shagang has invested about 30 billion RMB in over 100 environmental preservation upgrading projects covering various aspects, like: gas, water, noises, slag, etc. Those investments provide a decisive way for Shagang to achieve: ultra-low emission, fulfilling the standard requirements for all production processes; upgrading technological level of all production processes; and overall optimization in product portfolio. A green and low-carbon transformation and upgrading track with Shagang features has been set and the company is showing its clean and fresh image.

Starting from April of this year, the gas-steam combined cycle power plant (CCPP) project has been ongoing with full power. Because of the state-of-the-art technology, the CCPP plant is able to generate electric power with high efficiency, low consumption and low emission. The whole facility can be fast started and controlled in a flexible way. The total investment for this project is about 1.6 billion RMB and it will improve the gas utilization rate of Shagang, when the facility is in operation. It is expected to generate 750 million KWH electricity annually and saving over 80,000 tons of standard coal. At same time for wide-range reduction in consumption of coke, coal powder, gas, electricity, etc, Shagang is devoted in improving energy utilization efficiency in all production processes, focusing on detailed technical applications and equipment innovations, optimization in the areas of coking, sintering, iron making, steel making, rolling and utility supply, etc.  90% of energy saving technologies and solutions on the promotion catalogue of the National Development and Reform Committee has been implemented in Shagang.

In terms of circular economy, Shagang’s concept is “reducing waste, reuse the waste, and convert the waste back to resources”. Shagang has setup a complete full recycle chain for the green development with the headline: “reducing waste from starting line—intelligent sorting—high efficient conversion—fine deep processing”.  The annual benefit gained from waste recycling operation covers more than 10% of the total profit of the organization. These activities serve not only a better environment, but also add additional power to the development of the company.  For promoting the new resource cycling concept in the industry and community and transformation of waste utilization method, Shagang has developed an active “city mining” program, which puts steel scrap and other social regenerative garbage into the recycling chain of the steel production systems.

To build a green Shagang, the story of “water” is a major part of the whole process. Shagang has invested in building over 40 sets of water treatment systems for recycling all industrial waste water generated by various production processes. Over 98% of used water is recycled for further use.  As been required by the national standard class 1 A, Shagang has invested in building community sanitary waste water collection facilities in various areas, which provide makeup water supply to the production plants. Additionally, Shagang also uses tail water from the local municipal wastewater treatment plant as makeup water supply for the water recycling systems of the organization, which reduces over 5 million tons of fresh water consumption of the company.

Based on the technical innovation and advantages of equipment capability, Shagang is always persistent in green engineering, developing and producing recyclable green steel products with properties like: high strength and toughness with low weight, H2corrosion resistant and long service time, as well as providing downstream customer with low-carbon green steel solutions. Shagang was the world wide first producer of HRB400 high strength and corrosion resistant rebar with a service life time of 120 years, which is 10 times better than ordinary rebar in corrosion resistance property. This type of product set the milestone for the future low carbon building material. Tire cord with Cr and other products, developed by Shagang independently, makes its strong contribution to lightening of vehicles, which bring the vision of “low-carbon and energy-saving through whole life cycle of steel product” into reality. 

Shagang has established general greening blueprint with detailed action plans. The overall green belts cover over 2 million square meters of Shagang’s production area, where green plants can be seen in all 4 seasons. Shagang has invested over 1 billion RMB in cleaning, greening and decorating campaign along the bank line of the Yangtze River for building an industrial showcase. The bank line has become an ecological highlight of Yangtze water area with clean water, green bank and tarmac paved road. 

Over the years, Shagang has been awarded with various honorable titles and awards, which are strong evidence for the achievements of green development of Shagang, such as:

--- National 4 star enterprise in energy utilization efficiency

---“Clean production and environment friendly enterprise” of steel industry in China;

---“Front runner in energy utilization efficiency” in steel industry;

--- Model enterprise in clean production in Jiangsu Province

---Demonstration enterprise in low-carbon economy in Jiangsu Province

   Just name a few.

Currently Shagang is targeting those innovative breakthrough low-carbon technologies, such as: H2metallurgy; carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS); research and development of green products. Shagang is committed to the campaign of the steel industry for extensive reduction in carbon emission.

“In this year, Shagang is to be steady in planning and forward moving. The key is to, while maintaining a steady business operation, improve quality, add green objectives, pursue new achievements, integrate more intelligent means, and devote to the responsibilities”, Mr. Shen Bin, Chairman of Board and Party Secretary of Shagang Group, said: the organization is to maintain the momentum in low-carbon development and upgrading environmental conservation activities; speed up in executing “garden alike plants”“clean plants” plans; promote the world wide leading cast-strip technology; accelerate the application of domestic and international frontier technology. All of these aims are to bring the core competitiveness of the organization into the first tier of the world wide steel industry.