text: Amongst the other newly steel-producing countries, in 2017 South Korea produces 71 million tonnes, nearly double Germany; and Brazil 34 million tonnes; all three countries have not changed much since 2011. 
  Indian steel production in 2017 is just over 100 million tonnes; up substantially from 70 million tonnes in 2011 – compared to only 1 million tonnes at the time of its independence in 1947. By 1991, when the economy was opened up steel production grew to around 14 million tonnes. Thereafter, it doubled in the next 10 years, and then it is doubling again, maybe over a slightly longer span.
  The world steel industry flattened from 2007 to 2009 at 1,300 million tonnes, before rising again, due to worldwide recession starting in 2008, with its heavy cutbacks in construction, sharply lowered demand and prices falling 40%.
  Showing the impact of that plateau, in 2007 ThyssenKrupp spent $12 billion to build the two most modern mills in the world, situated in Alabama and Brazil. They lost $11 billion on the new plants, which sold steel below the cost of production. Finally in 2013, the plants were sold at under $4 billion.
  Nowadays, the steel industry is on the edge of a major technological evolution to deal with the huge amounts of CO produced in the conventional steelmaking process. The use of blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnace produces around 1.8 ton of CO per ton of steel produced. In order to reach the climate objectives as stated in the Paris Climate Agreement, the European Green Deal, etc., the steel industry will have to implement carbon capture and sequestration or carbon capture and utilization technology or change to less conventional steelmaking technologies such as the electric arc furnace route. Other alternatives are the use of biomass, plastic waste or hydrogen as reducing agent in the blast furnace instead of coal.