As already presented in detail in previous reports, the currently still prevailing blast furnace route is based on a mixture of fuels and raw materials both from fossil sources. Most of this energy is converted: For example, voestalpine generates electricity in its captive power plants from process gases and uses it to drive both the production process and the downstream processing steps. This enables the Group to cover a large part of its electricity requirements from its own generation.
Only 6.1% of total energy consumption is currently procured from the power grid. The remainder is obtained through the conversion of coal (51.3%), the resulting coke (22.5%), and natural gas (17.4%).
Percentage of energy sources 2023
Renewable energy sources play a key role in voestalpine’s long-term climate protection goal of achieving net zero emissions by no later than 2050. voestalpine already uses renewable energy in the form of green electricity and biogas. These are included in the “Electricity (purchased)” and “Other energy sources” items in the above diagram. The share of these amounted to around 3% of total energy consumption in the reporting period, which also includes the reducing agents coal and coke.
The renewable energy sources used can be broken down as follows:
Proportion of renewable energy sources 2023
The largest share of renewable energy sources procured is generated by third parties, supplemented by renewable electricity generated in-house as well as biogas and biomass.
The voestalpine Group’s total energy consumption fell slightly from 36.9 TWh to 36.4 TWh in 2023.
Total energy consumption
Energy consumption increased to 4.4 MWh per ton of product in the specific analysis. The largest consumers in 2023 were also the steel production sites in Linz (24.9 TWh) and Donawitz (6.2 TWh).
Specific total energy consumption
