What the term ‘green steel’ means depends on who you talk to, says Camilla Kaplin. This is because the phrase can be taken to mean any product that is, “more sustainable than it used to be”. For the senior manager of Environment at Finnish steel manufacturer Outokumpu – the largest steel producer in Europe, second in the Americas – this approach to defining sustainability credentials for the metal is too vague. She prefers to talk in terms of the ISO14040 environmental management standard to “clarify the situation”, specifically with reference to assessing CO2 emissions associated with products and raw materials.

“We have companies saying that from an environmental or climate perspective, their steel today is ‘better’ than what they had before. But because I work with these issues, I know that what you are allowed to call green steel is becoming more and more regulated and that it must fulfil a certain standard.” It follows that if the data reported on...