Hyundai Steel wins first Steelie Award for life cycle assessment excellence

Hyundai Steel has been named the top company in the life cycle assessment (LCA) category at the Steelie Awards, presented by the World Steel Association.

The company announced Thursday that it received the honor at the association's annual conference in New Delhi, India, on Monday (local time), where it submitted a proposal titled "Standardization of LCA Calculation Guidelines to Improve Comparability Among Steel Products."

The win marks Hyundai Steel's first Steelie Award. The company said the recognition affirms its LCA calculation and management capabilities against competition from global steelmakers.

The Steelie Awards are the steel industry's leading global prize, presented annually by the World Steel Association to member companies for outstanding contributions to the sector's advancement. The awards cover six categories: clean steel production, process and product innovation, sustainability, life cycle assessment, talent development and communications.

The LCA category recognizes achievements in standardizing calculation methods or applying LCA to product development, process improvement, projects and policy. Hyundai Steel earned high marks for presenting a calculation method that minimizes variance in the environmental impact of by-product gases — an approach designed to improve the comparability of carbon emissions data across steel products.

Hyundai Steel identified the importance of establishing calculation standards that reflect the comparability of carbon emissions from steel products. The company focused particularly on the fact that by-product gases — which significantly influence LCA results — yield different environmental impact assessments depending on the calculation standard and business structure applied.

In response, Hyundai Steel partnered with Inha University on a three-year joint research project beginning in 2023, running simulations across more than 24 scenarios to calculate the environmental impact and carbon emissions from by-product gas combustion under each scenario and identify the optimal calculation approach.

The company also applied the research findings to obtain overseas Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) certification — a system that quantifies and discloses the environmental impact across a product's full life cycle, from raw material extraction through production, retail, use and disposal — for blast furnace products, confirming the reliability and applicability of the calculation method.

"Our contribution to improving the reliability of environmental impact assessments for steel products was well received by the global steel industry," a Hyundai Steel official said. "We will continue to work toward providing trustworthy information."

Meanwhile, Hyundai Steel has been expanding its customer brand touchpoints through various marketing activities, including the recent launch of an integrated brand called "H ONE" that encompasses both rolled H-beams (RH) and built-up H-beams (BH), as the company moves to target the high-value construction market in earnest.