Prof Aparna Sawhney (Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University) is presenting a seminar  on Wednesday, 12th April in Seminar Hall 1 at 4:00 p.m.

Title : “Are recycling plants more energy-efficient?: Study of secondary steel manufacturing in India”.

Abstract 

Recycling and re-use of waste helps in resource conservation and pollution reduction.  Indeed, the re-use of scrap in secondary steel manufacturing has had proven energy-efficiency gains and decreased carbon emissions in the US and Europe.  This paper examines whether the re-use of ferrous scrap has also helped the Indian industry to reduce energy intensity in secondary steel production.  We track the energy intensity of steel manufacturing plants, distinguishing between the ferrous scrap-using plants from the non-scrap users, in India over the period 1998-99 through 2013-14. We find that energy intensity has reduced over the years for plants in the industry, however contrary to the experience in the US and Europe, in India the energy-efficiency has been the highest among non-scrap users, followed by plants using only imported-scrap, and poorest among plants using domestic scrap.  Our accompanying analysis of overall factor-productivity gives similar results, and suggests that the quality of scrap available in India is poor, hence the strategy of re-using scrap led to adverse resource efficiency impact. Our analysis also suggests that plants using higher quality of imported ferrous scrap have fared better than those dependent on domestic scrap.