On July 7, 2025, the TRANS Research Group hosted an invited academic lecture by Dr. Tianduo Peng, Associate Research Fellow and Lead of Transportation and Industry Research at the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development, Tsinghua University, titled “Decarbonizing Steel and Supply Chain Restructuring: Techno-Economic Assessment of Hydrogen-Based Steel.”
Hydrogen direct reduction of iron (H₂-DRI) is regarded as one of the key technologies for achieving significant carbon reductions in the steel production process. Under the traditional spatially intensive development model, it is necessary to build a resilient and flexible production system. The presentation highlighted that while supplying hydrogen as a raw material through renewable energy, the coordinated and flexible operation of the renewable energy–hydrogen–steel production system should be achieved to buffer the impact of renewable energy volatility, enabling steel production to balance raw material and energy supply and demand across different time scales. The storable and transportable characteristics of hydrogen and direct reduced iron may give rise to a new paradigm in steel production, where hydrogen production, ironmaking, and steelmaking processes become spatially decoupled, leading the steel supply chain toward spatial decoupling and functional redivision. This study explores the development of an hourly H₂-DRI-EAF system flexibility analysis model and evaluates the application potential, operational strategies, and techno-economic feasibility of the direct reduced iron production route in different regions of China.