In February, Brazil’s largest power company, Axia Energia, announced an agreement with German partners to develop the country’s first green hydrogen plant dedicated to low-carbon steelmaking. A month later, CSN, one of the country’s largest steel producers, launched a green hydrogen project at a facility in the state of Paraná.
Though only small pilots, the two projects signal new ambition within Brazilian industry: to prove both the commercial viability of this emerging steelmaking pathway and Brazil’s potential advantages as a producer of sustainable steel. This, in a sector where coal-based blast furnaces still make up nearly 75% of steel production.
The use of green hydrogen produced using renewable energy is widely seen as a promising path to reducing carbon emissions from steelmaking. But so far, globally, few hydrogen-based steel facilities operate at a commercial scale, amid high costs and investment requirements, and slow demand signals.
These new projects in Brazil have arrived amid a challenging time for Latin America’s largest steel producer, with industry attention dominated in recent years by external pressures from the global steel market.
“The main concern of the Brazilian steel industry has been the influx of Chinese steel, which has led to a substantial drop in profitability,” Germano Mendes de Paula, an economics professor at the Federal University of Uberlândia, told Dialogue Earth. Between January and September 2025, imports of Chinese steel increased by 25.9% year on year, according to the Instituto Aço Brasil, the main steel industry association.
This surge has been recorded in countries across the world, as producers in China, the world’s largest steelmaking nation, have found markets for a surplus of supply. Consequently, there has been pushback from the Brazilian industry, which has struggled to compete on price, decrying what it sees as “unfair” subsidies and support from the Chinese government for its steelmakers. Anti-dumping measures were eventually imposed on some Chinese steel products in early 2026.
The impact on Brazilian steelmakers has forced some to limit their investments, and could restrict their capacity to pursue cleaner production. “The context is not exactly favourable for Brazilian steel companies to engage in an accelerated decarbonisation process, especially since the necessary investments are very high,” said Mendes de Paula.
Despite this, Brazil has continued to receive attention from analysts and investors for the advantages at its disposal. It is well established among the world’s leading producers and exporters of high-grade iron ore, a key input for steelmaking; it is home to one of the world’s cleanest electricity grids; and it has seen rapid recent growth and further potential for renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. This has seen it attract a pipeline of over USD 18 billion in investments in green hydrogen projects.
“There are environmental and climate imperatives, but beyond that we see the green steel agenda as a strategic one to strengthen Brazilian industry,” Julia Cruz, secretary for green economy, decarbonisation and bioindustry for Brazil’s industry ministry, told Dialogue Earth.
Brazil has seen rapid growth in renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, which have helped to attract over USD 18 billion in investments in green hydrogen projects (Image: Tânia Rêgo / Agência Brasil)
Green gains and limits
Like most steelmakers, Brazil remains largely dependent on blast furnaces for its production, which drives the sector’s contribution of around 4% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Figures in the sector, and some analyses, have nonetheless pointed to a cleaner edge to Brazilian steel. “Our steel is undoubtedly one of the greenest in the world. But there is still room to make further progress,” said Cruz.
Some estimates put Brazilian steel’s carbon intensity at between 1.3 and 1.7 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per tonne of crude steel produced – below the average of 2.0 tonnes CO2e among other major steelmaking nations, including China and India. But other assessments contest this, putting Brazilian steel’s CO2 intensity closer to the 2.0 tonne mark.
Thus far, gains in emissions reduction have relied on “incremental measures in the near term, in as bankable and economically viable ways as possible”, according to Marc Farre Moutinho, Brazil country lead for the Industrial Transition Accelerator, which supports cross-sector collaboration on decarbonisation. For Brazil’s relatively young blast furnace fleet, he explained, the focus has been on modernisation and efficiency upgrades.
The lower carbon intensity of some Brazilian steel has also relied on its unique use of plant-based charcoal, or “biochar”, a lower-carbon alternative to coal in blast furnaces that accounts for roughly 10% of national steel output. Companies such as Aço Verde do Brasil use this route for their entire production, claiming to result in carbon-neutral steel. But charcoal’s overall emissions impact is often contested.
Other companies, such as Gerdau, the country’s largest steelmaker, have achieved emissions reductions by increasing the share of recycled scrap steel in their production. This can be fed instead into electric arc furnaces (EAFs), whose processes are cleaner thanks to Brazil’s grid, with 89% of electricity generation now met with renewables.
However, Brazilian steelmakers face a challenge shared around the world should they seek further emissions reductions through the use of scrap: finding the stuff. There are constraints on domestic supply and recovery, while nearly 50 countries have restricted scrap steel exports as this becomes a strategic decarbonisation resource.
Stefania Relva, director of industrial transformation at E+, a Brazilian think-tank, told Dialogue Earth these dynamics “reinforce injustice”: “We see a lot of companies from the Global North importing scrap from the Global South and benefitting from decarbonisation. It is making developing countries’ task of decarbonising our industry even more difficult.”
It is in this context that project developers are exploring hydrogen-based steelmaking in Brazil, specifically for the direct reduction of iron (DRI) process. No DRI facilities currently exist in Brazil, and globally the process is almost entirely fed by natural gas.
Relva described this switch as not merely a “transition” but a total “transformation”, expressing doubt over the current appetite for this challenge: “The industry would need to take the risk on a new technology, as they do not have the supply chain. And also a new type of energy. It’s two big risks.”
Policy targets industrial opportunity
Despite these concerns, policymakers have increasingly looked to create the conditions for Brazil to pursue its clean industrial opportunities. Since 2023, the Lula da Silva government has taken a proactive approach to both industrial and climate policy, which was practically absent under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Relevant programmes that have been launched by the Lula administration include: the overarching climate plan for emissions reduction to 2035; the New Industry Brazil policy targeting greener industrialisation; and a forthcoming National Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy (ENDI), being led by Cruz and her ministry.
Farre Moutinho said the Industrial Transition Accelerator has supported these initiatives, and that the focus has been on “reframing the conversation” towards green industrial growth: “It removes the framing of decarbonisation as a burden or obligation, or something that industry needs to do, into something it should want to do.”
Companies do not move to decarbonisation because they do not have a strong signal of demand. We have a chicken and egg issue
Stefania Relva, director of industrial transformation at E+
New Industry Brazil, launched in 2024, will reportedly see 300 billion reais (USD 60 billion) invested in a range of industries by the end of 2026, with the Brazilian development bank, BNDES, playing a prominent role.
Both Cruz and Farre Moutinho identified a need for lower-cost financing to incentivise decarbonisation projects. “I suspect that it will take a couple of compelling case examples of projects getting over the line, actually getting financed, and starting to operate before the incumbent industry starts to move with greater dynamism,” Farre Moutinho said.
But for lower-emissions steel, and the green hydrogen and “green iron” vital to making it, Brazilian producers face a question ubiquitous to markets around the world: who’s buying?
“Companies and suppliers do not move to decarbonisation because they do not have a strong signal of demand. We have a chicken and egg issue,” said Relva.
Globally, concerns around this have centred around the so-called “green premium” implied by the cost of newer steelmaking methods, and a willingness among buyers to commit to paying this.
The role of public procurement has therefore received attention, with state construction and infrastructure projects potentially offering guarantees of demand. Cruz told Dialogue Earth that her department is working with other ministries to implement a new strategy for sustainable public procurement, launched in late 2025.
Public procurement also featured in the Industrial Transition Accelerator’s consultations with the industry ministry on the upcoming industrial decarbonisation strategy, Farre Moutinho said. “Demand-side measures are ultimately the most important piece to unlock,” he added. “If you can get that, the technology, research and finance tends to follow.”
Geraldo Alckmin, Brazil’s vice-president and minister for development, industry and trade, speaks at the opening of the 2024 Brazil Steel Congress in São Paulo, organised by the Instituto Aço Brasil (Image: Paulo Pinto / Agência Brasil)
Global cooperation is needed
A key hurdle to finding markets for cleaner steel and other green goods is agreed standards among countries.
“We still do not have a common understanding on what ‘green steel’ is,” said Relva. “We can agree on carbon thresholds, but there are doubts regarding the way we account for these emissions.”
This has gained fresh urgency after the EU’s CBAM came into force in January. Under CBAM, importers are required to report emissions linked to their purchases, with a penalty if these exceed a defined threshold. Brazil exported a third of its 33 million tonne steel production in 2025, with shipments to Europe doubling compared to 2024.
Cruz described CBAM as a concern, and reiterated the Brazilian government’s strong opposition to the mechanism. “Just because something is in the interests of sustainability does not mean it can be imposed unilaterally by anyone,” she said. The government was working on “mechanisms to respond to this reality,” she added.
Among these initiatives is the pending launch of Brazil’s carbon market, with steel and iron among the industries expected to be covered. CBAM allows for some exemptions if countries’ national carbon markets align with the EU’s own emissions trading scheme. Cruz said Brazil will argue for such exemptions once its market is running, and called for multilateral cooperation on carbon pricing.
Relva spoke of a similar need for dialogue around emerging goods such as green iron, a solid, transportable form of the metal processed using renewables, of which Brazil is seen as a key potential provider: “We have three countries with some of the highest potential to produce green iron: Brazil, Australia and South Africa. And we have three regions that could be the biggest buyers of these products: China, India and Europe. But there’s no forum where these six countries are talking about this.”
She did, however, point to the Integrated Forum of Climate Change and Trade, launched at COP30 in Brazil, as a potential venue. “The idea is kind of trying to create a WTO but for green goods,” she added.
Mendes de Paula remained cautious about the prospects for greener steel and iron in Brazil: “I am not pessimistic about this possibility, but after following the industry for over 35 years, I have seen that several projects never left the drawing board.”
He similarly called for Brazilian steel’s decarbonisation to be put in global perspective: “How can a project with much higher operating costs be economically justified when the Chinese steel industry exports massive quantities of high-emission steel, which has substantial subsidies? The discussion about decarbonisation should not be separated from the issue of international trade.”
Flávia Milhorance also contributed reporting for this article.
