Sustainability Inroads into Automotive, Steel

At a conference I attended recently, terms such as lifecycle analysis, emissions, environmentalism, water scarcity, fuel efficiency, carbon footprint, and carbon leakage surfaced freely and frequently. No, it wasn’t at a Greenbuild expo, Sustainable Brands conference or even at our own Sustainable Manufacturer Conference & Exhibits.

It was at a well-established conference at the intersection of an old-guard, heavyweight industry and its sturdy, well-established cousin: automotive, steel. At the recent Great Designs in Steel conference, these terms rolled off the lips of some of the biggest dogs in the steel and automotive industries, including Nucor chief John Ferriola.

“Advanced high-strength steel helps automakers meet the challenges of achieving the 54.5 MPG CAFE standards to help reduce carbon emissions,” Ferriola said. “Lifecycle analysis may soon be a regulation,” he added.

About 1500 attendees packed the conference center to hear presentations–most of which centered on reducing vehicular weight to meet the ambitious 2016 fuel standards of 35.5 MPG and 2025 standards of 54.5 MGP. Session topics included the use of advanced high-strength steel technologies in the 2014 Ford Mustang®, and in the Chevy Spark®; a minimum-thickness material study; optimization in thin-gauge steel; and mass reduction techniques.

Many discussions also centered around sustainability, not only in terms of meeting CAFE standards, but also regarding general environmental effects.

Four panel experts delved into lifecycle analysis (LCA) and how it helps determine a product’s overall environmental effects.

Was the referencing of LCA mostly a tactic to substantiate, promote, and defend the use of steel in automotive? Probably. Even so, the presence of LCA as a topic, coupled with fuel efficiency standards sessions, at the conference is a bellwether that sustainability has made inroads into automotive—and more is sure to come.

It also signals that the automotive industry has, at last, stopped fighting the realities of fuel efficiency and emissions standards and progressed to the point of actually dealing with the inherent challenges and working on finding real solutions.

That bodes well for the entire automotive and steel industries.

Got thoughts? I’d love to hear from you. Weigh in with your reply.