"With the high-quality development of China's economy, the growth model will be transformed, reduction, decarburization, green, digital, etc., to bring qualitative changes to the steel industry, China's steel leading the world steel development pattern is not far away!" On May 5, Gan Yong, honorary president of the Chinese Society of Metals and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, encouraged the high-quality development of Chinese steel and talked about several thoughts at the National Conference on promoting electric furnace short-process steelmaking held in Luzhou, Sichuan Province.

Gan Yong said that China's steel output has ranked first in the world for 27 consecutive years, accounting for half of the world's total. The whole industrial chain of China's steel industry plays a pivotal role in the country's manufacturing industry, which supports China's rapid economic development and has achieved green development. However, China's iron and steel industry still faces problems: first, the industrial chain is not sound, especially the iron ore resources rely on imports, affecting the security of the supply chain. China's steel demand will plateau in the 14th Five-Year Plan period, iron ore demand will be high and stable. Especially, we need to pay great attention to the strategic guarantee of resources and take long-term consideration so as to give full play to the advantages of exchanging market for resources. Second, the quality of high-end products is not stable, "stuck neck" products have not been solved. There is still an obvious gap between China's high-end iron and steel materials and foreign countries. Although it has a certain production capacity after "bottleneck" research and development, there is a gap in consistency and stability, and it can not fully meet the needs of users.

He also pointed out that low-carbon development requires the steel industry in the future to pay attention to the full life cycle of enterprise management. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a comprehensive analysis that considers the potential environmental impact of a product at all stages of its manufacture, use, and final disposal (reuse, recycling, or end-of-life disposal). Carbon emissions of steel enterprises and steel products will be quantified, green mild steel iron products will become the first choice of downstream users, and life cycle assessment reports will become an important accessory for steel product exports.

Optimizing steel layout and encouraging short process is also part of green and low-carbon development. "Based on the current crude steel production, when the proportion of electric furnace crude steel reaches 25%, the carbon emissions of China's steel industry will be reduced by 10.2%, an annual reduction of 194 million tons of CO2. We should develop electric arc furnace short process city steel works reasonably." Gan Yong analyzed that the development of electric furnace steel has been restricted by the shortage of scrap steel resources. After the rapid development in the early 21st century, the accumulated steel capacity in China reached 9 billion tons by 2018. With the arrival of scrap cycle of steel products, the shortage of steel resources will be improved. Chinese Academy of Engineering "black metal Mineral resources strong country Strategy" project research shows that by 2025, China's iron and steel accumulation will reach 12 billion tons, the annual output of scrap steel resources will reach 270 to 300 million tons. In 2030, China's steel storage capacity will reach 13.2 billion tons, and the annual output of scrap steel resources will reach 320 to 350 million tons. At that time, the waste steel resources will be adequately supplied, and the advantages of the short process of steel making will be gradually reflected.

Looking outward-looking, to develop China-Russia steel industry cooperation and strengthen China's short-process technology development, in Gan Yong's opinion, is a very meaningful road worth exploring. On the one hand, Sino-Russian cooperation can enhance iron ore supply chain security. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, Russia has 78.6bn tonnes of iron ore resources as of 2021, trailing only Australia and Brazil. In addition, Russia has a large number of undiscovered iron ore reserves, estimated total resources of more than 100 billion tons. On the other hand, China-Russia cooperation can ease the pressure of energy conservation and carbon reduction in China's steel industry. Russia is rich in natural gas resources. China has fully mastered the full set of technology and process equipment for direct reduction of iron by gas-based method. After beneficiation in Russia, abundant and cheap natural gas can be used to directly reduce iron ore into iron blocks and transport it back to China for short process of electric furnace steelmaking, which can not only greatly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in sintering, pellet, blast furnace-converter long process in China, but also greatly reduce transportation costs.

One of the important symbols of the high quality development of the iron and steel industry is to be digital and intelligent. In this regard, Gan Yong said that from the perspective of the whole process, to do a good job in top-level design, research and development design, production control and supply chain overall optimization, to build a new intelligent factory, to build a service-oriented enterprise, "unmanned workshop", "black light factory" will be the ultimate goal in the future. At the same time, the intelligent industrial cluster of iron and steel industry is the main path of structural adjustment, transformation and upgrading. He suggested using e-commerce platform and enterprise Internet of things as means, quality, environmental protection and cost big data analysis as tools, attracting advantageous enterprises and production capacity to join through preferential policies, realizing production capacity cooperation, technology joint, procurement joint and sales joint step by step, forming intensive operation management of advantageous production capacity, and creating "steel production capacity consortium". In particular, he mentioned that the construction of "1+N" industrial cluster network steel mills, giving full play to its advantages of dynamic management and production service system, can realize the intelligent platform economy instead of enterprise economy, promote the efficiency of the whole industrial chain with market-oriented platform, and build the whole industrial chain into a value chain.