A Review on Global Evaluation of Biomass Suitability for Ironmaking: Prospects for Concurrent Production of Sustainable Biomass, Iron, and Steel, as Well as Policies that Promote these Industries

Introduction People’s material lives and productivity have significantly increased since the industrial revolution. This is accompanied by the rapid depletion of natural resources and the massive damage of the ecological environment, which forces people to live under double oppression of the environment and resources. Despite the years-long emphasis on sustainable/green development, the world’s “brown economy” still dominates and worldwide emissions of natural resources (such as energy resources) and carbon dioxide have skyrocketed (Brand, 2012). Particularly in the last few years, this scenario has gotten worse and sparked global worries about climate change, environmental problems, and energy security. The main focus of location appropriateness studies has been on power generation from renewable sources like solar and wind, which has shown that different locations both domestically and internationally are more or less suitable for renewable. The literature on bioenergy, and specifically its use in sectors like iron and steel, is lacking, nevertheless. Although Suopajärvi and Fabricius and Wang et al. examined the potential of using biomass for iron production in Finland and Sweden, respectively, those nations together account for less than 1% of the world’s total crude steel output via BFBO. Due to this disparity, decision-makers in steel-producing nations worldwide must strategically decide if implementing bioenergy in the sector is a viable
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approach to decarbonize it. In order to ensure sustainable usage of biomass, the current study was conducted to close the gap and show how opportunities or barriers vary between nations.