Steel industry roadmap sets 2050 emissions target

New Zealand’s steel industry has put a number on its climate goal. The Sustainable Steel Council’s Forging Ahead roadmap, published in April 2026, sets a target of cutting emissions from steel used in New Zealand buildings and infrastructure by more than 90% by 2050, measured against 2020.

The Sustainable Steel Council (SSC) is a group of steel industry leaders working on the sector’s sustainability performance. Its roadmap was funded by the Building Research Levy, MBIE, the Heavy Engineering Research Association (HERA), Metals NZ and Steel Construction New Zealand, among others. Consultancy thinkstep-anz did the modelling.

“This roadmap is both a commitment and an invitation to work together,” writes Jeremy Sole, the SSC’s executive officer, in its foreword.

What the 90% covers

The target is narrower than the headline figure suggests. It covers direct and electricity-related emissions from ironmaking, crude steel production, recycling and fabrication, which the SSC calls the emissions the industry can most directly influence.

It counts all steel used in New Zealand construction, whether it’s made here or imported. Exported steel and steel inside imported goods such as cars are left out. The interim target is a cut of more than 30% by 2030.

The roadmap uses no carbon offsets, and it assumes steel demand grows by around 31% in line with population. The 2020 base year is an average of 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, which skips the Covid disruption.

Add the indirect emissions from mining, coatings, transport and end-of-life processing, and the projected cuts are smaller. The roadmap puts them at around 25% by 2030 and around 70% by 2050. Those indirect sources made up about 20% of life cycle emissions from construction steel in 2020.

Glenbrook’s furnace does the early lifting

Roughly half the steel used in New Zealand is made from crude steel produced at Glenbrook, south of Auckland. The mill is run by New Zealand Steel, a subsidiary of BlueScope Steel, and typically produces around 650,000 tonnes a year.

In August 2026, NZ Steel announced its first commercial production from a new electric arc furnace (EAF) at Glenbrook. The project replaced the site’s oxygen steelmaking furnace and two of its four coal-fired kilns, halving coal use there. NZ Steel says the change cuts the steelworks’ annual greenhouse gas emissions by more than 45%.

BlueScope put the project’s cost at NZ$300 million. The Government is contributing up to $140 million through its Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund. Contact Energy supplies firmed renewable electricity, and Sims and GMS supply scrap under long-term agreements.

The roadmap forecast that the furnace, more recycled steel and more imports from overseas EAF mills would cut direct emissions from steel used in New Zealand by over 30% on 2020 levels by the end of 2026.

Where builders and specifiers come in

Design and reuse carry part of the load. By 2050 the roadmap assumes better design cuts steel use in new construction by 20%, and adaptive reuse of existing structures cuts demand by a further 10%. It names over-specification as a target and calls for architects, engineers and builders to coordinate earlier, when design decisions have the biggest impact.

For specifiers, the working tool is the environmental product declaration (EPD), a standardised report of a product’s life cycle impacts. The roadmap lists specification guides for low-emissions steel as a priority before 2030, with HERA and the Structural Engineering Society among those involved. Digital material passports, which record steel members so they can be reused later, are on the same list.

Pacific Steel, NZ Steel’s sister company, will be first to sell product made from the new furnace’s steel. It says its PACIFIC DCRB reinforcing bar is expected to offer the lowest cradle-to-site embodied carbon of any rebar for local projects, partly because shipping offshore rebar to New Zealand adds transport emissions. Comparing EPDs means checking they cover the same life cycle stages, either cradle to gate or cradle to site.

MBIE describes its building climate change work programme as supporting voluntary action, and it has published a whole-of-life embodied carbon assessment methodology for early adopters.

The roadmap asks the Government to phase in Building Act and Building Code amendments that would introduce carbon reporting and targets. It also suggests faster consenting for buildings that can prove they meet an embodied carbon target.

The next marker is 2040. The roadmap says savings of around 45% by then are needed to stay on track, with hydrogen-based ironmaking and carbon capture expected to matter more from the 2040s.