Guest Post – Decarbonising Metals: Pressing Issues Persist but Financial Strength Mitigates Credit Risk

From Europe • 10 Jul 2024

Steel and aluminium producers are among the largest carbon emitters globally. While they are well positioned to meet decarbonisation targets for this decade, technological uncertainty, costs and regulatory pressure means the longer-term outlook remains uncertain. Terry Ellis, Director, Climate Transition Risk, and Alexander Griaznov, Director, Corporate Ratings at S&P Global Ratings, explore

The metals sector has attracted significant attention for its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The largest segments of the sector by both production and emissions, steel and aluminium producers have faced growing pressure from stakeholders and regulators to decarbonise. Yet despite setting targets, steel and aluminium production remains dominated by relatively high-emission processes, and potential solutions are fraught with technological uncertainty.

What’s more, the cost to transition will be significant – not just in terms of technology, but also as a result of growing credit risks such as higher carbon prices. Indeed, regulation such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will likely have implications for decarbonisation costs, which could materially impact credit quality further down the line. As such, despite being on track to meet near-term decarbonisation goals, long-term prospects for the metal sector are less certain.

Decarbonisation challenges prove stubborn

Demand for metals has been consistently driven by decades of population growth and economic expansion. Steel and aluminium, for instance, contribute significantly to global economies and are central to enabling the energy transition as they serve as major components in infrastructure such as wind turbines, transmission and electric vehicles.

In response to growing regulatory and stakeholder pressure, most major, metals companies rated by S&P Global Ratings have set near-term decarbonisation targets and outlined ambitions to completely decarbonise by 2050. Yet despite declining average emissions per unit of revenue, metals and mining companies’ emissions growth continues to outpace that of other industries. Indeed, between 2016 and 2021, rated metals producers’ scope 1 and scope 2 emissions increased by 14% on an absolute basis due to increased overall output. What’s more, few have detailed plans to achieve longer-term goals.

A key issue is that current, carbon-intensive production methods, including smelting for aluminium and blast furnaces for steel, will be difficult to replace. Much of the blast furnace capacity has been added in the last 10-15 years and, given furnaces have a lifespan of up to 40 years, still have decades of production ahead of them. Since this technology is expected to remain prominent in the coming years, the intensity of steel-making emissions appears unlikely to radically change in the near term.

Existing technologies can reduce but not eliminate emissions

Fully decarbonising steel will entail difficult changes to existing production processes. Nonetheless, steel and aluminium companies are adopting, or preparing to adopt, a range of key pathways to decarbonisation over shorter and longer-term horizons.

Energy efficiency measures – including energy recovery, off gas recycling and better controls and processes – have long been a focus for metal makers, as they directly link to operating and support costs. These measures should continue to yield small reductions in emissions. However, once low hanging fruit has been picked, their impact could be limited.

Meanwhile, some metals producers may be able to develop their own renewable generation, but securing low-carbon power sources will present a major challenge for many. Companies with existing fossil fuel assets, and particularly those with many years of service remaining, will prove reluctant to invest in new, clean power – especially given renewables’ significant upfront capex needs.

Process changes, such as switching from a blast furnace to an electric arc furnace (EAF) or adopting hydrogen-based steel production, have more potential and could significantly lower the intensity of carbon emissions. In addition, Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) – which replaces coal with hydrogen in the steel-making process – offers efficiency in primary iron ore production and reduced dependency on coal. That said, capex limitations and a reliance on high quality iron core could mean it is difficult to integrate into existing locations.

Climate transition risk continues to increase

As one of the heaviest GHG emitters, the metals sector has been a target for regulation – one of the main drivers for emissions reductions.

S&P Global Ratings expects that metals companies operating in the EU will face increasing costs related to carbon emissions from 2026, when the rules of the EU ETS will be updated in line with the European Green Deal and Fit for 55 packages. Notably, changes to the existing “cap and trade” scheme will result in a significant reduction in tradable, Scope 1 carbon dioxide allowances, known as EU Allowances (EUAs), and the gradual phasing out of free allowances from 2026 to 2035.

S&P Global Ratings expects that a reduction in the number of EUAs will support continued price increases. Meanwhile, the phase out of free allowances will mean that companies that do not reduce emissions will increasingly have to purchase EUAs through the EU ETS.

EU ETS reform will go hand-in-hand with the launch of CBAM, which could affect rated companies outside of the EU. CBAM seeks to equalise carbon costs between domestically produced and imported products, thereby avoiding so-called carbon leakage – where production moves overseas to avoid carbon-related costs in the EU.

Under CBAM, EU importers of key commodities produced outside of the EU – including steel and aluminium – will have to pay additional taxes equal to the cost of EUAs, based on the carbon intensity of products imported. In practice, this means that the cost of carbon-intensive imports, such as steel and aluminium, will also increase in EU ETS participating countries.

Regulation could increase credit risk

The formal introduction of the CBAM and the gradual removal of free allowances under the EU ETS means the cost of carbon will have an increasingly material impact on the financial profiles of EU producers and companies with significant exports to the EU.

Currently, strong metrics and likely supportive markets should help metals companies mitigate the high cost of decarbonisation. However, if higher costs coincide with a trough in the metals-price cycle, pressure on the credit quality of some companies could materially increase.

Looking ahead, the metals sector will face growing pressure to decarbonise. While existing technologies should enable them to meet shorter-term targets, solutions capable of delivering more substantial reductions in emissions still come with significant uncertainty. In turn, as pressure continues to build with the introduction of new rules and measures, regulation will likely remain a key credit risk transmission channel for the sector.

Link Credit: https://www.esgtoday.com/guest-post-decarbonising-metals-pressing-issues-persist-but-financial-strength-mitigates-credit-risk/

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Key Terms

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We have the right to share your Personal Data with:

Any member of our group, which means our affiliated companies;
Selected third parties including business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors providing search engine, data analytics, authorization, authentication, and hosting and storage services for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you and for the improvement and optimisation of our site;
To third parties in the event that (i) we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your Personal Data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets and/or (ii) if the Company or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case Personal Data held by it about its customers will be part of the assets transferred to such third party; and
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your Personal Data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms of Use or other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Company, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

9. Transfer of Personal Data

Your Personal Data may be transferred to and stored in different jurisdictions and may also be processed by staff operating within the various countries who work for us or for one of our contractors.

10. Retention of Personal Data

We will only retain your Personal Data for as long as necessary for the purposes collected, as set out at paragraph 3 of this Privacy Policy, and for any legal, tax, or accounting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for the Personal Data we hold, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the Personal Data, the risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your Personal Data, the reasons why we handle your Personal Data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances, such as the closing or termination of your Account, we may anonymise your Personal Data so that it can no longer be associated with you for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

11. Security

We will implement appropriate technical and organizational security measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risks of accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of or access to your Personal Data.

We monitor for and try to prevent security breaches. We implement security safeguards designed to protect your data. We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. However, we cannot warrant the security of any information that you send us. There is no guarantee that data may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.

The transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Data transmitted to our site.

Where you have chosen a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share the password with anyone.

12. Your Rights

Right of Access:

You have the right to access your Personal Data which we have collected and used.

Right to rectification:

You have the right to require us to rectify any inaccurate Personal Data we hold about you;
You also have the right to have incomplete Personal Data we hold about you completed, by providing a supplementary statement to us.

Right to restriction:

You can restrict our processing of your Personal Data where:
You think we hold inaccurate Personal Data about you;
Our handling of your Personal Data breaks the law, but you do not want us to delete it and request that we restrict our use of the Personal Data instead; and/or
We no longer need to process your Personal Data, but you want us to keep it for legal reasons. Where you exercise your right to restrict us from using your Personal Data, we will only process your Personal Data with your consent, except for storage purposes and to handle legal claims. We will inform you before any restriction of processing is lifted.

Right to data portability:

You have the right to receive your Personal Data in a structured, standard machine readable format and to send this to another organisation controlling your Personal Data.
This right only applies to your Personal Data we are handling because you consented to us using it or because there is a contract in place between us.

Right to erasure:

You have the right to require us to erase your Personal Data which we are handling in the following circumstances:
- Where we no longer need to use your Personal Data for the purposes for which they were collected;
- Where we needed your consent to use your Personal Data, you have withdrawn your consent and there is no other lawful way we can continue to use your Personal Data;
- When you object to our use of your Personal Data and we have no compelling reason to carry on using it;
- If our use of your Personal Data has broken the law; and
- When we must erase your Personal Data to comply with any applicable law.

Right to object:

You have the right to object to our handling of Personal Data as set out at paragraph 3 of this Privacy Policy, or for the purpose of direct marketing. We will stop upon your request unless we have compelling grounds as to why our use of your Personal Data should continue.

13. Third Parties

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of third party networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for your access to these websites. Third parties may also use cookies which we have no control over. Please check their individual privacy policies for more information on how your personal data will be handled by these websites.

Additional Terms

14. Cross-Border Data Transfers

We store and use your data outside your country.

We process data both inside and outside of Vietnam and rely on legally-provided mechanisms to lawfully transfer data across borders. Countries where we process data may have laws which are different from, and potentially not as protective as, the laws of your own country.

15. Communications

We contact you and enable communications between Members. We offer settings to control what messages you receive and how often you receive some types of messages.

We will contact you through email, mobile phone, notices posted on our websites or apps, messages to your LinkPower inbox, and other ways through our Services, including text messages and push notifications. We will send you messages about the availability of our Services, security, or other service-related issues. We also send messages about how to use our Services, network updates, reminders, job suggestions and promotional messages from us and our partners. You may change your communication preferences at any time. Please be aware that you cannot opt out of receiving service messages from us, including security and legal notices.

We also enable communications between you and others through our Services, including for example invitations, groups and messages between connections.

16. Advertising

We serve you tailored ads both on and off our Services. We offer you choices regarding personalized ads, but you cannot opt-out of seeing other ads.

We target (and measure the performance of) ads to Members, Visitors and others both on and off our Services directly or through a variety of partners, using the following data, whether separately or combined:

Data from advertising technologies on and off our Services, pixels, ad tags, cookies, and device identifiers;
Member-provided information;
Data from your use of our Services;
Information from advertising partners, vendors and publishers.

We will show you ads called sponsored content which look similar to non-sponsored content, except that they are labeled as advertising (e.g., as “ad” or “sponsored”).

17. Ad Choices

We adhere to self-regulatory principles for interest-based advertising and participate in industry opt-outs from such ads. This does not opt you out of receiving advertising; you will continue to get other ads by advertisers not listed with these self regulatory tools. You can also opt-out specifically from our uses of certain categories of data to show you more relevant ads.

18. Marketing

We promote our Services to you and others. In addition to advertising our Services, we use Members’ data and content for invitations and communications promoting membership and network growth, engagement and our Services.

19. Direct Marketing

We currently do not share personal data with third parties for their direct marketing purposes without your permission.

20. Developing Services and Research

We develop our Services and conduct research.

We use data, including public feedback, to conduct research and development for our Services in order to provide you and others with a better, more intuitive and personalized experience, and drive membership growth and engagement on our Services.

21. Surveys

Polls and surveys are conducted by us and others through our Services. You are not obligated to respond to polls or surveys, and you have choices about the information you provide. You may opt-out of survey invitations.

22. Insights That Do Not Identify You

We use your data to produce and share insights that do not identify you. For example, we may use your data to generate statistics about our members, their profession or industry, to calculate ad impressions served or clicked on, or to publish visitor demographics for a Service or create demographic workforce insights.

23. Security and Investigations

We use data for security, fraud prevention and investigations. We use your data (including your communications) for security purposes or to prevent or investigate possible fraud or other violations of our User Agreement and/or attempts to harm our Members, Visitors or others.

24. Legal Disclosures

We may need to share your data when we believe it’s required by law or to help protect the rights and safety of you, us or others.

It is possible that we will need to disclose information about you when required by law, subpoena, or other legal process or if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (1) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (2) enforce our agreements with you; (3) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (4) protect the security or integrity of our Services (such as by sharing with companies facing similar threats); or (5) exercise or protect the rights and safety of LinkPower, our Members, personnel or others. We attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their personal data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

25. Limits on liability

We work hard to provide the best Products we can and to specify clear guidelines for everyone who uses them. Our Products, however, are provided "As is," and to the extent permissible by law, we make no guarantees that they always will be safe, secure, or error-free, or that they will function without disruptions, delays, or imperfections. To the extent permitted by law, we also disclaim all warranties, whether express or implied, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not control or direct what people and others do or say, and we are not responsible for their actions or conduct (whether online or offline) or any content that they share (including offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful and other objectionable content).

We cannot predict when issues may arise with our Products. Accordingly, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, under no circumstance will we be liable to you for any lost profits, revenues, information, or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive or incidental damages arising out of or related to these Terms of Use (however caused and on any theory of liability, including negligence), even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

26. Disputes

We try to provide clear rules so that we can limit or hopefully avoid disputes between you and us. If a dispute does arise, however, it's useful to know upfront where it can be resolved and what laws will apply.

If you are a consumer, the laws of the country in which you reside will apply to any claim, cause of action or dispute that you have against us that arises out of or relates to these Terms of Use, and you may resolve your claim in any competent court in that country that has jurisdiction over the claim. In all other cases, and for any claim, cause of action or dispute that LinkPower files against you, you and LinkPower agree that any such claim, cause of action or dispute must be resolved exclusively according to Vietnamese law.

27. Contact Information

We welcome any questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Policy. Please address them to info@linkpower.eco.

Community Guidelines

Thank you for using LinkPower. This list of “Dos and Don’ts” limit what you can and cannot do on our Services.

Dos

You agree that you will:

Comply with all applicable laws, including, without limitation, privacy laws, intellectual property laws, anti-spam laws, export control laws, tax laws, and regulatory requirements;
Provide accurate information to us and keep it updated;
Use your real name on your profile; and
Use the Services in a professional manner.

Don’ts

You agree that you will not:

Create a false identity on LinkPower, misrepresent your identity, create a Member profile for anyone other than yourself (a real person), or use or attempt to use another’s account;
Engage in any act of propaganda, sabotage and distortion of the government, political institutions, and State policies. In case of discovery, not only will the account be deleted, but we can also provide that user's information to the authorities for legal action;
Discuss political issues, religious discrimination, or ethnic discrimination;
Develop, support or use software, devices, scripts, robots or any other means or processes (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) to scrape the Services or otherwise copy profiles and other data from the Services;
Override any security feature or bypass or circumvent any access controls or use limits of the Service (such as caps on keyword searches or profile views);
Copy, use, disclose or distribute any information obtained from the Services, whether directly or through third parties (such as search engines), without the consent of LinkPower;
Disclose information that you do not have the consent to disclose, such as confidential information of others;
Violate the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets or other proprietary rights.
Violate the intellectual property or other rights of LinkPower, including, without limitation, (i) copying or distributing our learning videos or other materials or (ii) copying or distributing our technology, unless it is released under open source licenses; (iii) using the word “LinkPower” or our logos in any business name, email, or URL except as provided in the Brand Guidelines;
Post anything that contains software viruses, worms, or any other harmful code;
Reverse engineer, disassemble, decipher or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Services or any related technology that is not open source;
Imply or state that you are affiliated with or endorsed by LinkPower without our express consent;
Use bots or other automated methods to access the Services, add or download contacts, send or redirect messages;
Monitor the Services’ availability, performance or functionality for any competitive purpose;
Engage in “framing,” “mirroring,” or otherwise simulating the appearance or function of the Services;
Overlay or otherwise modify the Services or their appearance (such as by inserting elements into the Services or removing, covering, or obscuring an advertisement included on the Services); and/or
Interfere with the operation of, or place an unreasonable load on, the Services (e.g., spam, denial of service attack, viruses, gaming algorithms).

Tell us if you see abusive content

If you see something you believe may violate our policies, whether in profiles, posts, messages, comments, or anywhere else, please report it to us. Please use the reporting tools responsibly and only for their intended purposes.

The above guidelines apply to all members. Depending on the severity of violation, we may limit the visibility of certain content, label it, or remove it entirely. Repeated or egregious offenses will result in account restriction. If you believe action taken on your content or your account was in error, you can submit an appeal.

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