Environment: Executive Summary

The JFE Group strives to maintain its businesses in harmony with the environment for the prosperity of society. We have positioned climate change as a key management concern in our pursuit of becoming the top runner in carbon neutrality technology development by 2035 toward achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. To this end, we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the steel business and expanding our contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in society as a whole, centered on the engineering business. The entire Group is working in concert to establish an environmental management framework, and we have identified climate change, transition to a circular economy, and biodiversity conservation and nature positive as key issues under our Eighth Medium-term Business Plan (FY2025-FY2027). We are committed to resolving global environmental concerns.

The JFE Group systematically addresses climate change by incorporating the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) philosophy in its management strategies. In the steel business, we have created a roadmap for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) toward short-, medium-, and long-term targets. In FY2024, we achieved a 23% reduction against the target of an 18% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to FY2013. Our efforts targeting a reduction of more than 30% by FY2030 include introducing innovative electric arc furnaces and using direct reduced iron. Furthermore, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, we are pursuing the parallel development of ultra-innovative technologies, including a carbon-recycling blast furnace, to establish these technologies around 2035. The shift to steelmaking processes that achieve carbon neutrality, however, entails enormous costs, and creating markets for products with environmental value (GX products), such as green steel, and gaining support from the government and others will be indispensable. To this end, since FY2023 we have been supplying JGreeX™, a variety of green-steel products that, compared to conventional products, significantly lowers GHG emissions in the steelmaking process based on the mass balance approach, and we are expanding sales to a variety of sectors. To support investment, we applied for a program of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and secured support for the introduction of an innovative electric arc furnace at the Kurashiki district of the West Japan Works. In the engineering business, we are working to expand our contributions to reducing GHG emissions in society by constructing renewable energy power generation facilities, including offshore wind power generation. In FY2024, we achieved our target of contributing to a 12 million tonne reduction in GHG emissions in society, and we are expanding initiatives for achieving reductions of 20 million tonnes in FY2030 and 30 million tonnes in FY2035.

The transition to a circular economy is also positioned as a key theme, and we are coordinating our steel, engineering, and trading businesses and value chain to expand the use of recycled resources, improve the efficiency of waste resource utilization, and convert waste into resources.

In addition, we are promoting initiatives for biodiversity conservation and nature positive, assessing the dependencies and impacts between our business activities and natural capital, and advancing disclosures in line with the TNFD. These efforts mainly include monitoring and conservation activities around production sites and initiatives to improve the marine environment by using steel slag products.

In regard to the blast furnace site and other facilities suspended in FY2023 at JFE Steel’s East Japan Works (Keihin District), we are focusing on converting the land for public and highly public-interest use, contributing to the sustainable development of local communities and society by establishing new industries and creating jobs for the next 100 years.