Taipei, Taiwan – The world’s top rated automakers are building an believed 74 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every single 12 months because of to the industry’s failure to decarbonise its steel offer chain, according to a new report by Greenpeace.
The vehicle market is seriously dependent on steel as a important production product and the best 16 automakers used an approximated 39-65 million tonnes of steel in 2022, the environmental advocacy group claimed in the report.
Toyota, the world’s leading automaker, utilised 6.3 million tonnes of metal in 2022 by itself, followed by Volkswagen with 5.2 million tonnes and Hyundai-Kia with 5.2 million tonnes, according to the report unveiled on Thursday.
That dependency has arrive at a price tag to the earth, according to Greenpeace, owing to the substantial amount of money of carbon emissions in the approach, pushing the world’s temperatures at any time nearer to the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold that weather experts say will spell catastrophe.
“Automakers are steering us towards local climate catastrophe by failing to decarbonise their steel supply chains,” Greenpeace East Asia senior analyst Wenjie Liu reported.
“Automotive steel has a large carbon footprint, but major automakers like Hyundai, Volkswagen, and Toyota have not disclosed their metal emissions. We will need automakers to each consume considerably less metal and to generate the transition to zero-carbon steelmaking.”
Metal manufacturing generated 573 million tonnes of CO2 past 12 months, roughly the identical annual output as Australia, and its heavy carbon footprint will not improve with out additional involvement from the auto business, which consumed 16 per cent of international steel past year, Liu mentioned.
In addition to Toyota, Volkswagen, and Hyundai-Kia, the list of firms assessed by Greenpeace contains Standard Motors, Stellantis, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, Geely, BMW, Renault, Mercedes-Benz, SAIC Motor, Wonderful Wall Motor, and Mazda.
None of the organizations discloses the carbon emissions from its steel use and only a handful disclose their annual steel consumption, which implies emissions figures are tough estimates.
The environmental watchdog acknowledged that some firms, notably European automakers, had designed initiatives to decarbonise their steel provide chains, but mentioned their goals remained modest.
More exertion is also needed in East Asia, residence to 60 p.c of the world’s steel manufacturing and handful of automaker-led initiatives, Greenpeace explained.
“If they are critical about decarbonisation, by 2030, automakers must halve their emissions from steel. The to start with phase is the disclosure of steel-relevant emissions, but we sadly have not observed this transpire nonetheless,” Liu said.
“Automakers need to also situation environmentally friendly steel procurement commitments, which would signal steelmakers to commit in new technologies. In the more time time period, automakers need to achieve net zero emissions across their supply chains, both of those by using lowered use of steel and a total transition to zero-carbon metal.”
Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia and the other carmakers named in the report did not respond to Al Jazeera’s ask for for remark.