How should steel products get credit for cutting emissions? Final Principle 10 workstream begins 5 November

ResponsibleSteel’s Decarbonisation Progress Levels show how far steel production has gone in cutting its climate impact. Today, they are based on a whole steelworks’ average emissions.

That average encourages sites to improve as a whole. But steelmakers rarely change everything at once. A new, cleaner production line often runs alongside older equipment, and its progress disappears into the site average.

From 5 November, a working group will explore whether, and how, sites could make claims for individual products or production lines, so that cleaner steel can be marketed as such as early as possible. It will look at what is assessed, how emissions are shared between products, what safeguards and tracking are needed, and how claims are communicated.

In a 2025 survey, 68% of responding ResponsibleSteel members supported this, provided strong safeguards are in place. Proposed safeguards include:

• the whole site must be certified

• the whole site must first reach the first progress level

• the approach would end on a set date (for example 2035), as a bridge through the transition

• no product could claim lower emissions than the site’s best technology can physically achieve

• sites could only claim as much low-emission steel as they actually produce

Renewable energy purchases could play a limited, tightly tracked role, but carbon offset credits would not count.

The group’s input will feed directly into version 3.0 of the ResponsibleSteel International Production Standard and its guidance and annexes. The aim is recognition that is fair, credible and comparable, without opening loopholes.

ResponsibleSteel members are welcome to join. Anyone can request the detailed proposal to give feedback, or ask questions, at standards@responsiblesteel.org.

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