In a report, the green charity claimed that steel production used in vehicles is responsible for an estimated 573 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year, approximately equivalent to the annual emissions of Australia.

“Automakers are steering us toward climate catastrophe by failing to decarbonise their steel supply chains. Automotive steel has a massive carbon footprint, but major automakers like Hyundai, Volkswagen and Toyota have not disclosed their steel emissions. We need automakers to both consume less steel and to drive the transition to zero-carbon steelmaking,” said Greenpeace East Asia senior analyst Wenjie Liu.

In 2022, the 16 largest automakers in the world used at least 39 million tonnes of steel, generating an estimated minimum 74 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

Toyota used the most steel of all 16 automakers, with at least 6.3 million tonnes, which resulted in an estimated minimum 12 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions. Toyota was followed...