Commenting on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s final rule requiring mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions monitoring under the Clean Air Act announced last week, AISI issued the following:
We need to come up with a solution to climate change that keeps the manufacturing sector and valuable manufacturing jobs here in America. Because of our long-standing commitment to making the highest quality steel with the lightest carbon footprint, America’s steel industry will be part of the solution to the climate challenge. AISI noted that:
• As far as limiting carbon emissions, America is the best place to make steel compared to other parts of the world.
• Here in the U.S., we lead other manufacturing sectors in reducing emissions (reducing our energy intensity per ton of steel by 33% since 1990). According to the EPA’s own 2008 sector strategies report, steel led the way among 8 industrial sectors examined.
• The Clean Air Act is not the appropriate vehicle for regulating CO2. A legislative solution is the correct avenue for addressing this issue, as Administrator Jackson herself has acknowledged. Any legislative solution needs to address the huge increase in costs that energy intensive industries will face, the need for allowances for direct and indirect emissions and a border adjustment mechanism.
More than 4 million jobs could be at risk if U.S. climate-change legislation does not include a tariff on goods imported from countries that don't adopt similar emissions standards, according to a report released Oct. 1 by the Economic Policy Institute. This is a complex issue that requires hard work to get it right because our nation has so much at stake, AISI concluded.
The United States has the largest manufacturing economy in the world, producing 1.6 trillion dollars in goods annually. America’s global market share of manufacturing has held steady at around 22 percent for 30 years. And one in six U.S. jobs is in or directly tied to manufacturing, which still pays premium wages and benefits. To read more, click here.
The domestic steel industry’s capability utilization rate, while still off by about 24 percent from one year ago production levels, continues to inch upwards, this week reaching 59.3 percent, up from its 2009 low of 40.4 percent the week of April 4th. Raw steel production climbed once again last week, reaching 1,415,000 tons, a 1.7-percent increase over 1,392,000 tons the previous week and 61.2 percent ahead of 866,000 tons at the start of this year.
*AISI steel member companies are responsible for over 75 percent of the steel produced in the United States.
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