CHICAGO - A national push toward green technology and energy independence could be a boon to the U.S. steel industry.

With earnings outlooks gloomy for the next year or so, ArcelorMittal executive Louis Schorsch boasted about the opportunities the steel industry has in creating a more efficient future.

Better steel in cars can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by 20 percent, Schorsch said. "That's a bigger savings than the U.S. steel industry as a whole."

Advanced high-strength steels are as strong as regular steel, but lighter. Using the high-strength steels in car bodies would allow manufacturers to build lighter cars without compromising safety.

And the lighter the car, the better its gas mileage.

The kind of high-quality flat steel needed to make car fenders for hybrid cars is produced at integrated steel mills, such as those run by ArcelorMittal and U.S. Steel.

Schorsch warned, though, that a national policy on greenhouse gas reductions would need to contain special provisions for integrated steel mills, which use large amounts of coke, a kind of coal, to make steel.

Currently there is no alternative to the use of coke, and Schorsch said a tax on those carbon emissions, unless it was imposed on steel manufacturers around the world, would put U.S. plants at a competitive disadvantage.

Source: Gary Post-Tribune, October 31, 2008.