The steel industry in Japan has already achieved the world’s top-level energy efficiency by making persistent efforts for energy saving, through which contributing to CO₂ reduction as one of the countermeasures for global warming. Technology development is the key to responding to requests for further reduction of CO₂ on a global scale, and drastic steps by innovative technologies are deemed indispensable in the long term.

In the initiative “Cool Earth 50” announced by the then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in May 2007, proposed was the achievement of compatibility between environmental protection and economic growth through the utilization of energy-saving technologies and the like. To accomplish this aim, an initiative “COURSE 50” or “CO₂ Ultimate Reduction in Steelmaking Process by Innovative Technology for Cool Earth 50” was established and positioned as one of the “Innovative Technology Development”.

COURSE 50 aims at developing technologies to reduce CO₂ emissions by approximately 30% through suppression of CO₂ emissions from blast furnaces as well as capture - separation and recovery - of CO₂ from blast furnace gas (BFG), and establishing the technologies by ca. 2030 with the final goal of industrializing and transferring the developed technologies by 2050.

The first step project of this initiative, STEP I for fy. 2008 - fy. 2012, was applied for public offerings by NEDO, or New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, and officially adopted as the organization’s “Environmentally Harmonized Steelmaking Process Technology Development.”

COURSE 50 - The development of next generation steelmaking processes opening the way to the future has finally started.