
Photo courtesy of SSAB
An energy sector analyst speaking at the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) Ferrous Division meeting in late May said the European Union’s withdrawal from Russian energy supplies meant the region spent the equivalent of 10 percent of its GDP on energy in 2022—a major spike from the previous 4 percent level.
Ole Rolser, based in the Netherlands for McKinsey & Co., told BIR delegates this expenditure would likely remain elevated “for the foreseeable future.”
Steelmaking, as an energy-intensive industry, was among several in the EU that endured production cuts and facility shutdowns last year, Rolser said. Such cutbacks, combined with shifts in household behavior, helped cause Europe’s power demand to decline by from 4 percent to 8 percent last year (depending on the month) compared with 2021, said the analyst.
Having observed that crude oil prices had now returned to levels seen before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Rolser predicted further decline before he sees oil settling from $50 to $60 per barrel.
Rolser said the EU could become more seamlessly energy independent from Russia within a few years, even though Europe has historically relied on Russia to provide as much as one-third of its natural gas supply, with Germany, Italy and Poland among the largest volume buyers of Russian energy.
At the same Ferrous Division meeting, the division’s Statistics Advisor Rolf Willeke gave a presentation on the recently released 14th edition of the BIR’s “World Steel Recycling in Figures,” an annual handbook the division has produced annually for more than a decade.
The latest edition, covering the five-year period from 2018 to 2022, has replaced the “scrap” with the term “recycled steel.” A goal of the phrasing change, BIR says, is for metal recycling “to resonate even more effectively with the public and policymakers.”
Last year, Willeke said China had remained the world’s largest ferrous scrap consumer, melting more than 215.3 million metric tons. It holds the crown despite a 4.8 percent drop in its consumption compared with the previous year.
Turkey, long the world’s single-largest importer of ferrous scrap, saw its annual import volume drop by 16.5 percent scrap last year compared with 2021. And to complete the pattern of number one ranked countries losing some momentum last year, the EU maintained its position as the world’s leading ferrous scrap exporter in 2022 despite its outbound shipments dropping 9.4 percent year on year to about 17.6 million metric tons.
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