publication

The heterogeneous impact of coal prices on the location of dirty and clean steel plants

2017

Climate policy will predominantly affect industries that primarily rely on fossil fuels, such as steelmaking. Within these industries, exposure may be different by country according to the energy-intensity of national plants. We estimate the effect of coal prices on steel plant location worldwide and production preferences for BOF, a polluting technology, and EAF, a greener one. A 1% increase in national coal prices reduces BOF and EAF installed capacity by around 0.51% and 0.34% respectively. We simulate the implementation of a stringent European carbon market with no border adjustment and find a non-negligible shift in steel production outside Europe, with limited impact on the technologies employed to produce steel. If applied worldwide, the same policy would primarily affect production in Asia, which relies on BOF and currently benefits from lower coal prices.