Appointment of Chief Executive Climate Change

BlueScope today announced the establishment of a new Executive Leadership Team position, appointing Gretta Stephens as Chief Executive Climate Change. 

Managing Director and CEO, Mark Vassella said, “In recent years we have built climate change into our corporate strategy, recognising that addressing climate change is essential to our long-term success and have publicly stated our commitment to taking action on carbon emissions. We are now formalising that approach. Gretta will lead our new Climate Change function. With her technical background in engineering and materials science, and her track record of working with government and wider industry to solve macro problems, Gretta is ideally placed to lead this new global function. 

“Gretta will now drive the work already underway, including our decarbonisation pathway and our long-term carbon reduction aspirations. Gretta’s new team will explore a range of technologies to understand the scale of emissions reduction they might deliver, potential costs and timeframes, and the barriers and enablers to implementation.   

“We recognise that the future of iron and steelmaking will need to be centred around breakthrough technologies – once proven and scalable. Exciting work is being undertaken around the globe to explore breakthrough ‘green steel’ ironmaking technologies – including using hydrogen and electrolysis. BlueScope is actively monitoring the development of these technologies, which are currently in early stages of technology readiness. Such initiatives will need to be blended with public policy, capital, technology, and superior steelmaking knowhow to make them work. 

“In the shorter term, the steel sector will need to rely on technology performance improvements within conventional routes, increased use of renewable energy and other abatement measures. 

“We are currently considering a diverse portfolio of projects including optimising raw material mixes, capturing and reusing a greater proportion of waste heat and gases, and potentially replacing a proportion of the coal currently used in the process with alternative reductants such as biomass or hydrogen-containing gas such as coke ovens gas. Increased rates of scrap usage, and greater use of renewable energy to cut Scope 2 emissions, are also being considered. BlueScope expects to make further announcements about these plans during this calendar year – together with updated climate scenario analysis and a long-term carbon emission reduction plan.”