Good morning, and welcome to BlueScope's 2024 ESG webinar, which follows the release of our sustainability reporting suite earlier this week. I'm Mark Vassella, and I'm joined this morning by Gretta Stephens, Chief Executive, Climate Change and Sustainability, and David Fallu, our Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we'll update you on some of the key disclosures before we take your questions. We're joining you today from BlueScope's head office in Melbourne, part of the Eastern Kulin Nation. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land, the Wurundjeri peoples. We pay our respects to elders, past, present, and emerging, and to all First Nations people joining us today. As we take time to focus today on BlueScope's sustainability footprint, the best place to start is to recap our approach as to the why and what of who we are as a company.
Many of you will be familiar with our purpose, our bond, and our strategy. At BlueScope, we create and inspire smart solutions in steel to strengthen our communities for the future. That's our purpose. It's very much our why and guides what we do. Our bond reminds us of our commitments to our key stakeholders, customers, our people, our shareholders, and our local communities, and our strategy across its transform, grow, and deliver planks, brings added definition to how we execute on our purpose. It's served us well for many years. We regularly test the focus we have on our sustainability outcomes. Our five most critical outcomes will be no surprise to you, given the nature of our businesses. They are: sustainable growth and transformation, safe, healthy, and inclusive workplaces, responsible products and supply chains, climate action and environment, and strong communities.
I hope you've had the opportunity to review our sustainability reporting documents, which we released on Tuesday. They encapsulate the hard work that's going on across the BlueScope network as we embed sustainability in all that we do. Now, in terms of today's agenda, we're going to primarily focus on safety and climate. I'll talk to safety at the outset, given our recent performance and our global refocus program. Climate, another key topic for BlueScope, and we'll devote plenty of time to this with the backdrop of the release of our second climate action report. And there'll be ample opportunity for questions at the end of the presentation. Starting with the key headlines from our sustainability reporting suite. Firstly, to safety.
I'll touch on this in more detail in a moment, but this is an area of intense effort as we progress our global refocus program to drive improved performance. On inclusion and diversity, we continue to deploy local strategies to better reflect the communities in which we operate. I'm pleased to note that we've hit a milestone with women making up a quarter of the BlueScope workforce in FY 2024. On sustainable supply chains, we've continued our important program of work, with a focus on supplier assessments and audit programs. And on climate, Gretta will run you through this in more detail, but I'm pleased to say there has been a huge amount of work progressed in this space since our first climate action report was released in 2021.
To note a few highlights: Our near-term optimization work and increased low-emissions EAF production has delivered solid emissions intensity reductions in line with our 2030 target level. We're progressing a range of initiatives that are critical to unlocking decarbonization pathways for our business and the industry, including the installation of the EAF at New Zealand, which is now expected to at least halve the Glenbrook site's emissions. Our collaboration with Rio Tinto and BHP, progressing a pre-feasibility study for a DRI ESF pilot plant using Pilbara ores. And our broader Australian DRI option study, which is helping us to understand the potential opportunities for DRI production in Australia. We've also updated our decarbonization pathway and enabler set for the progress made in recent years, and you'll see, while some of the enablers are in place in the US and New Zealand, Australia remains a challenge, particularly regarding energy.
We’ve updated our scenario analysis and physical risk assessment, which has proved our strategy and operations are resilient across various climate scenarios. Now I’ll turn to health and safety. As a recap, BlueScope has a strong foundation in managing safety well, and it’s a fundamental tenet of how we do business. This has been grounded in a behavioral approach, which engineers out risk where possible and then designs processes to manage the residual risk. This approach has served us well, seeing a significant reduction in injury frequency and severity from the 1990s into the 2000s, where safety then plateaued in the long-term range of five to seven through the 2010s. In an effort to make further progress, in 2020, BlueScope evolved its approach to drive a greater focus on people centricity.
This sought to build on the strong foundations by driving improvements in our people's capacity and capability to design effective risk controls, with a focus on ensuring the people who do the work contribute to the solutions. This is built on the pillars of human organizational performance, which drive greater effectiveness in risk controls, focuses on a culture of learning and development rather than blame, and aims to simplify systems and processes where possible. While we continue to make progress in our evolved approach, our lagging indicator performance has been disappointing. The rise in TRIFR that we've seen in FY 2024 is unacceptable, and it's clear this outcome demanded immediate action. I note that our TRIFR measure, which I called out in our full year results, has changed.
During our assurance, we found an error in the calculation of worked hours at one of our businesses, and this has resulted in our previously disclosed result of 8.8 being adjusted to 9.1, which is shown here. While we're committed to our enhanced strategy, which, as I noted a moment ago, prioritizes deep engagement with our people to design solutions that create effective controls and build capacity, we feel we must return to focusing on our safety fundamentals. To tackle this, we launched a global refocus on safety in July. This program highlights the importance of basic safety practices to ensure the well-being of our workforce. The renewed focus includes ensuring strict compliance with core safety practices, making sure that our people, many of whom who are new to BlueScope, are committed to fundamental safety principles.
Providing our frontline leaders the resources to guide their teams, which most importantly, means giving them back the time in their calendars to engage in toolbox meetings, audits, and spending time on the floor, observing, coaching, mentoring, as we like to call it, felt leadership, and continuing the important work in engaging our people in risk control improvement projects and learning and development opportunities. I'm pleased with how the business has responded to the rollout of this global refocus program. However, note that there's lots of work to do to drive the required improvement in performance. We'll keep you updated on this program as it progresses. I'll now hand over to Gretta to take you through the climate materials.
Thanks, Mark, and good morning, all. Thank you all for joining us. It's a pleasure to have this opportunity to update you on the work we've been doing. I'll start by recapping our approach to addressing climate change and covering our recent performance. You'll be familiar with our climate strategy from our materials and past briefings, so I'll only touch briefly on this. Importantly, our climate strategy is embedded in our corporate strategy as one of the key delivery planks, and while reducing our emissions is core to the climate strategy, with a particular focus on direct abatement, we're just as excited by the opportunity for our products to contribute to climate abatement and adaptation through efficiency, resilience, and in renewables. We continue to see a bright future for steel. It is a critical enabler for the energy transition, spanning all types of renewable generation construction.
Steel's strength, durability, and recyclability mean steel is inherently circular. That circularity can be further enhanced at all phases of the cycle. We recognize that we are a small part of an enormous industry. We see working collaboratively across the iron and steel value chain as the most productive way to rapidly progress decarbonization. We'll expand on this further throughout this briefing, but we are engaging with groups in a variety of crucial arenas, such as raw material supply and application to future steel making, steel making technology, energy, and then into certification, building codes, and financing streams. These collaborations allow us to both contribute to and benefit from advancements in steel decarbonization and sustainability more broadly. We provided you with preliminary data on our FY 2024 emissions performance a month ago.
To recap, steelmaking greenhouse gas intensity has reduced 12% since FY 2018, aligned to our 2030 target level. The North Star expansion and improvements at our Port Kembla and Glenbrook Steelworks have particularly contributed. We're continuing to work in pursuit of our non-steel making target. However, given the nature of our operations and the available emissions reduction levers, the progress towards our target remains challenging and nonlinear, which this year's performance demonstrates. While our midstream sites have made solid progress in implementing and developing a range of projects to reduce emissions, their overall emissions intensity performance has been affected by lower dispatch volumes compared to FY 2018. This year, we're providing asset-level emissions intensity performance for the first time. Our primary steelmaking units at Glenbrook and New Zealand and Port Kembla have been on an impressive journey of reducing emissions over the last decade.
Glenbrook is a relatively higher emissions intensity business due to its unique iron-making process, but the EAF solution will dramatically improve this. Once the EAF is fully operational, it is estimated that the initial average crude steel embodied carbon will be about 1.6 tons of CO2 per ton of steel, with potential for that to decrease further as scrap volumes increase. The small uptick in Glenbrook's performance this year is to do with the production of plate iron inventory that we're holding in stock for the new EAF, which is counted in the emissions enumeration, but not in the dispatched ton denominator. Our blast furnace operation at Port Kembla Steelworks has reduced emissions intensity by 16% over the last decade. North Star operates what is known as a secondary steelmaking facility, using electricity to recycle steel scrap mixed with virgin pig iron and DRI.
Its emission intensity has improved since 2013. However, it slightly stepped up during the ramp-up of additional capacity over the last few years, given the efficiency losses during commissioning and ramping up the asset. Moreover, if BlueScope were to report under the market-based method, accounting for emissions-free energy certificates, or EFECs, North Star's emissions intensity would be closer to just 0.16 tons of CO2 per output ton of steel. BlueScope commenced Scope 3 reporting in 2020, and we have since made improvements to our data collection and reporting processes, focused on the accuracy of our Scope 3 GHG inventory. As you can see on this slide, our Scope 3 emissions are slightly greater than our combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions, with over a third of these Scope 3 emissions relating to the purchase of iron and steel.
So we face the same challenges in managing this largest category of our Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, as we do in managing our Scope 1 and 2. As part of our continued focus on our Scope 3 GHG emissions, we've developed an indicative long-term pathway and work program to further enhance the accuracy of our emissions inventory and determine feasible opportunities for Scope 3 GHG emissions reduction. This is going to require working with stakeholders to both fully understand our Scope 3 emissions baseline and to work towards reducing it. We've updated our climate scenario analysis in 2024 to help us ensure our business strategy and portfolio remain resilient against transitional and physical climate change impacts. This review incorporated revised scenario drivers such as policy, technology, and market outcomes for steel.
We've developed four scenarios to reflect global temperature outcomes, with two illustrating different policy pathways towards two degrees of warming. These scenarios are based on the latest IPCC and International Energy Agency reports, highlighting key drivers for each pathway. As a high-level summary, we found that our current strategy is broadly resilient across all the refreshed climate scenarios. We've also revised our physical climate risk assessment across 71 sites, and this time we've included a high-level supply chain impact analysis for all our steelmaking sites. In this analysis, we found that risk exposure does not increase significantly in the short to medium term under any of the scenarios. However, the exposure will increase towards 2050 and the second half of the century under the high climate scenario. Now, let's turn to our decarbonization pathways and their enablers.
You'll be familiar with this diagram, as it's broadly similar to the one published in last year's sustainability report. It highlights the dual-stream approach we are taking to steelmaking decarbonization, and the reliance on the enabler set for the large step down in our emissions that comes from the steelmaking transformation. I'd note that we have now published these pathway diagrams for each of our steelmaking sites in the Climate Action Report, noting that this group pathway is broadly aligned to that of our Port Kembla Steelworks, given the challenges we face at this site for the technology and other enablers. Similar to the steelmaking site pathway diagrams, this year, we've also published one for our midstream or non-steelmaking assets, which reflects the fact that over half of the emissions from these assets come from electricity.
As Australia accounts for nearly 60% of BlueScope's total midstream greenhouse gas emissions, our decarbonization pathway here is heavily dependent on further decarbonization of the Australian East Coast Energy Grid, which requires timely retirement of coal-fired generation capacity to be replaced with investment in sufficient firmed renewables. Across these pathways, the five enablers on the page remain critical to industry decarbonization, and you'll remember these from recent presentations and reports. I will run through each enabler to provide a brief recap on its importance and the key developments and focus areas for BlueScope. Before I do, I'd like to call out again the proactive role we have to play in cracking the code, but also the challenges we face in securing a future energy landscape and policy support to round out the enablers.
The evolution of iron and steelmaking technology remains important, given the coal-based blast furnace fleet dominates global steelmaking, and increases in both scrap-fed electric arc furnaces and direct reduced iron production are currently restricted by the limited availability of scrap and higher-grade ores, respectively. Despite this challenge, the more work we do in this space, the more we believe that technology is unlikely to be the rate limiter for the transition. This includes progress on installing an EAF in New Zealand and the work we're doing to progress DRI production in an Australian context, with a technology partnership with Rio Tinto and BHP to develop the electric smelting furnace pathway for Pilbara ores, as well as the broader DRI option study. This important work that will continue to progress, along with the technology collaborations with global steelmakers and the continued expansion of the low-emissions North Star facility.
The technology enabler is, of course, linked to the raw material enabler, as lower emission steelmaking is possible in regions with the enabling raw materials, such as DRI, in locations with high-grade ores and natural gas, or EAFs in regions with low-cost electricity and abundant scrap, like our North Star site. Outside of these specific locations, the limited availability of scrap and high-grade ores means that a technology solution is required to allow the more abundant low to medium-grade ores, such as those in the Pilbara, to be used in the DRI process. One such technology solution is the ESF technology, which we currently use in New Zealand. Recent progress has been in the form of both the increased use of scrap in the steelmaking process at Port Kembla and the signing of a scrap agreement in New Zealand to support the new EAF, given the domestic availability of scrap.
We're continuing our focus on the increased self-supply of scrap for North Star from our BlueScope Recycling business, and our work in supporting progress on the technology evolution enabler with the Rio Tinto and BHP ESF pilot plant study and broader Australian DRI option study to inform the raw material strategy for a step change in technology in Australia. Outside of the realm of our direct control, firmed renewable energy remains a critical enabler for the decarbonization of our operations and industry generally. While a lot more renewables are coming on stream, we still have a long way to go, and the challenge of firming needs to be addressed.
The challenge is further compounded by the required increase in electricity for the transition, with future iron making technologies requiring at least two times current requirements for a natural gas DRI process, or around fifteen times current consumption for green hydrogen iron making. Add to this, the cost challenge presented by the current and future energy demand across economies, which are already seeing uneconomic electricity prices in some regions. Work in this space has been around securing electricity requirements for the New Zealand EAF, as well as an opportunity to work with our energy provider in New Zealand on a grid-scale battery, as well as the lower order impact opportunities of supplementary solar generation at some of our midstream sites.
Given we don't have direct control, our actions in this space are centered around advocacy for grid decarbonization and the required transmission infrastructure, as well as reducing energy consumption and pursuing renewable opportunities where they make sense for our sites. Staying on energy, the hydrogen enabler now explicitly recognizes natural gas as the transitional step to get us to hydrogen. While green hydrogen can enable significant reductions in iron making emissions, the green hydrogen industry is in its infancy, and there is a long road to its commercial scale supply. In the meantime, a natural gas DRI can provide a very meaningful reduction in emissions and provides the demand signal for the investment in green hydrogen generation, given a natural gas DRI facility can be transitioned to run on green hydrogen once it's available.
The challenge here is around gas availability, given a natural gas DRI process would require forty times Port Kembla's current gas consumption. We've done a lot of work to understand the gas and hydrogen requirement for various DRI configurations in Australia in terms of both volumes needed and the price it needs to be supplied at to ensure the business can remain globally cost competitive. We'll continue to monitor developments in technology that may help alleviate the required volumes of hydrogen and gas, but remain steadfast in our advocacy for the domestic supply of competitively priced natural gas in Australia and our support of initiatives that support this enabler. And our final key enabler is supportive public policy. This enabler underpins all the others.
As you can see on the slide, there are six areas that we're focusing our advocacy on, which you'll see largely aligned to the enablers I've just covered. In short, we're supportive of policy that enables competitively priced natural gas through accelerating development of new suppliers, encouraging more suppliers, and providing sufficient domestic reservation that prioritizes domestic industrial users. Policy that encourages suppliers of low-cost firmed renewables, including a focus on the Illawarra Renewable Energy Zone. Policy that invests in the transmission infrastructure to enable decarbonization in Australia. Policy that is well-designed and timely to prevent carbon leakage. Policy that supports the development of commercial green hydrogen supply chains and helps to overcome the chicken and egg problem regarding supply and demand. And lastly, as we've seen in Europe, Canada, and New Zealand, policy that supports capital investment through grants, co-investments, and so on.
This remains both a challenge and an opportunity for BlueScope, the steel industry, and global economies, and we're continuing our work in advocating for policy solutions that underpin the sensible and sustainable decarbonization of the economies in which we operate. We're completely aligned to Australia's ambition to be a global-scale producer of green iron. However, if we are to be successful in this, it's important that we crawl before we can walk, by solving domestic supply before we contemplate larger scale exports. Moving on now to talk about the work underway across the BlueScope footprint in pursuit of our interim decarbonization targets and longer-term net zero goal. You may recall this chart from our previous disclosures, which I like to describe as the lead indicator for our decarbonization progress.
You'll see that the pipeline reflects a number of new projects in the concept and pre-feasibility stage, as well as a number of projects that have progressed through and out of the other side of the pipeline. We're now progressing 35 projects, up from 28 this time last year. Some of the movements in the pipeline we've seen in the last 12 months include: the inclusion of the DRI-ESF pilot plant pre-feasibility study with BHP and Rio Tinto, the addition of a range of projects at BlueScope Coated Products, following its acquisition across various stages, and the North Star debottlenecking and Port Kembla Steelworks plate mill upgrade projects moving to execution. This remains an important focus for us as we identify and progress initiatives to improve our performance and develop the enablers of large-scale decarbonization.
The New Zealand Electric Arc Furnace project is our largest project to deliver a commercially ready climate solution. As a quick recap, at a cost of NZD 300 million, two of the four existing kilns and one of the two melters are being replaced with a scrap-based EAF that can take molten metal and solid charge. The project is progressing well, with site works underway. The design phase has identified that we have the opportunity to reduce Glenbrook Scope 1 and 2 emissions by up to 1 million tons, or 55%. This represents a significant step towards BlueScope long-term 2050 net zero goal. We talked to you last year about our significant project looking at Australian DRI technology pathways and their necessary enablers.
This is looking at solutions using either magnetite ores, which is the proven technology, or if we can crack the code on the Pilbara hematite ores in DRI, it's potentially a game changer. The project has over 10 work streams, with the key focus areas on raw material sourcing, energy sourcing, partnerships, government policy, and engagement. We're working with the original equipment manufacturers, iron ore suppliers, energy suppliers, engineering specialists, and with governments. In the past year, we have narrowed from 42 project configurations at various locations to seven options across three locations. We've also clarified requirements and enablers, such as the raw material mix across different locations, the specific gas requirements, including price, and the policy settings required to make DRI successful in Australia.
Our work with Rio Tinto and BHP continues as we progress the evaluation of a pilot plant to process the abundant Pilbara ores ready for basic oxygen furnace steelmaking. This is a very significant project for the future of Australia's Pilbara iron ore industry, with the potential to unlock an emissions intensity reduction of over 85% through the hydrogen DRI ESF process. The pre-feasibility study work will conclude in early 2025. We're currently assessing possible locations in Australia for the proposed pilot plant, with the aim to build and operate a pilot plant as early as 2027, if approved. More broadly, we are continuing our technological collaborations with global steelmakers, in particular, Tata Steel Europe, Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe, and POSCO. These global steel giants have chosen to partner with us because of our technical capability, particularly as it relates to the melters in New Zealand.
As you can see from the picture on the slide, I was privileged to join our Head of Future Technologies, Chris Page, on a visit to Thyssenkrupp in Germany earlier this year, where we were able to see firsthand the exciting work they're doing in adopting DRI-ESF technology at commercial scale, which is expected to be operational by 2027. Our partnership with Thyssenkrupp is an exciting part of our work in developing the DRI-ESF flow sheet, and while they will not be solving the specific challenge associated with the Australian Pilbara iron ores that we're working on with Rio Tinto and BHP, we see great value in supporting their technology development, given our ESF experience in New Zealand, and for the opportunity this provides to learn from their operating experiences as they progress their project.
I'll now pass to David, who will touch on the approach we take to integrate decarbonization investment into our capital allocation framework.
Thanks, Gretta, and good morning, everyone. I'll touch briefly on capital allocation, where our framework was specifically set up to incorporate the requirement to support achieving our decarbonization goals. In FY 2021, we announced indicative spend to support achieving our 2030 targets and a longer- and longer-term decarbonization ambitions, with estimated spend of AUD 300 million-AUD 400 million over the next ten years. AUD 66 million has been invested under this program to June 2024, with the New Zealand EAF, the single largest consumer of funds. Importantly, our investment in decarbonization is broader than just in capital expenditure. Given the nature of the decarbonization pathway for steelmaking, many of our investments are operating expenses related to R&D projects. We already talked today about projects such as the ESF pilot, which will require climate capital in the future, and I'll profile further projects in the next couple of slides.
To bring the climate capital allocation approach to life, I'll touch on a few of the projects we're progressing across the business, noting that not all of these will meet the criteria of being solely climate-related, rather falling into our existing categories of sustaining or growth capital, given their economic return and rationale. In Port Kembla, we're looking to conserve heat energy to further enable increased scrap use by adding covers to the torpedo ladles that shuttle hot metal from the blast furnace to the basic oxygen furnace, as well as installing a new walking beam furnace as part of the broader plate mill upgrade project, which will materially improve the asset's emissions intensity.
In New Zealand, the team has completed a project to optimize iron chemistry and utilize the ladle metallurgical furnace to maximize scrap use, which is achieving up to 3.5% emissions improvement for the site. Our focus on projects extends beyond steelmaking operations to our midstream facilities, which have a strong focus on energy efficiency. This includes upgrade to paint lines at our Western Port facility in Victoria, as well as to our paint line in California, which is part of the NS BlueScope joint venture. These projects improve the efficiency of the lines, resulting in lower emissions and costs. And across our footprint of midstream facilities in Southeast Asia, the business continues to progress a range of solar projects to partially offset grid consumption, including both rooftop and ground-based projects.
Again, these projects don't all appear in our climate capital, but highlights the fact that sustainability benefits and economics are very much embedded in our capital improvement programs. I'll now pass back to Gretta, who will round out the session.
Thanks, David. As a recap, while we focused on safety and climate today, there's a wealth of information about BlueScope's approach to, and performance on, its key sustainability outcomes in the extensive disclosure suite, which was released earlier this week. And as we covered today, there's no shortage of challenges facing BlueScope, but we remain steadfast in our commitments and well-positioned with a broad program of work to achieve these. We're excited to progress the various programs of work we're undertaking and look forward to sharing our progress through our future disclosures and engagements. Before we take your questions, I'd like to step back and talk for a moment about how our approach to sustainability underpins BlueScope's long-term resilience. You'll be familiar with this slide from recent results presentations, and I'd note that our approach to sustainability isn't just shoehorned into the last sentence.
It underpins the broader resilience of the business, and this is because we focus on the long-term success of the business through the safe and efficient operations of our assets, through the stewardship we have for the outstanding suite of assets we operate, and the investments we are making for long-term growth and earnings. We view sustainability more broadly than a single issue or range of topics. To us, sustainability is core to our purpose, bond, and strategy. Sustainability is offering a safe and viable business today that is here for the long term, and with the long-lived asset base that we operate and the local communities we operate them in, we continually look to secure the future success of the business in all that we do.
Thanks for your time this morning, and with that, I will turn over to Tim Rodsted, our Head of Sustainability, who I'm sure you all know well, who will facilitate this morning's Q&A.
Thanks, Gretta. We're looking forward to taking your questions, and we'll be doing our best to answer as many as we can. If we don't cover everything on the call this morning, you are, of course, welcome to get in touch via the investor relations team, and we'll follow up. I note there are a number of people on the phone line. Operator, can you please let the first caller through?
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question via the phone, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad, and if you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the Ask a Question box. Your first question comes from Peter Steyn, from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Gretta, David, Mark, thank you very much for your time. Perhaps just keen to understand, there was a bit of a headline yesterday around Helios and BlueScope Ventures' activity there, while particularly interested in some of the technology that may open up to you. Perhaps a broader question around BlueScope Ventures, how many investments you've made, how you think about the parameters of those investments. You know, what level of control do you exercise typically, and how are you sort of approaching what comes through there, so stage gates, et cetera, et cetera? Just keen to understand your thoughts there.
Yeah, thanks, Pete, and good morning. Yes, we did get a bit of press yesterday on the Helios arrangement. So more broadly, how we've structured BlueScopeX, as we've called it, or the ventures business is we put it together a few years ago now, and we actually allocated it a budget of AUD 40 million. We've made five investments over that period of time, and we're nowhere near the AUD 40 million. It's you know, much less than that. But the way we've thought about it, Pete, is we set it up to think about the two broad areas that are most relevant to us and emerging technologies in those areas, and that is, of course, decarbonization, as you saw with the Helios investment yesterday.
The other area that we're focusing on is in building and construction. So where are there technologies or software or, products or processes that go to a much more carbon-efficient or thermally efficient approach from a building and construction space? So it's not, it's not a, a venture capital fund that has an open slather on investments. This is stuff that we think is relevant for us going forward. We manage it through, an investment committee inside the organization. Andrew Geary's been running it, but we manage it with, an internal investment committee.
I'd say it's a sum total of about two and a half FTE, so it's not a large investment from an operating cost perspective, but has given us some exposure to a broad range of technologies that are interesting to us in those couple of areas that I said are the major focus of the ventures group.
Mm. Thanks, Mark. And then, if I may just ask a quick follow-up: So in the context of the Helios investment, presumably, a big focus would be the scalability of whatever technology you, you're aiming at. Would you care to comment a little bit about the Helios technology and, its potential application, in the hematite space, as, as Gretta pointed out, trying to crack the code there?
Yeah, thanks, Peter. So just to talk about Helios a little bit, it's a very, very early-stage alternate iron-making pathway, and one of the things that we wanna do is to help, you know, incubate and bring those things along. I'd like to qualify, we haven't made an investment in Helios. We've signed an MOU around offtake volumes at the point where they start producing some. They're aiming to get to a pilot scale by about 2026 , but they're only talking about sort of thousands of tons per year. But you have hit the nail on the head there. The interest there is that it's a process that potentially is able to use a wider variety of different types of iron ore, and is a lower temperature process.
So it's really, I guess, under the heading of trying to encourage new technology, but also then being able for us to take that offtake that they've made to trial that, potentially in a proc- our pilot.
Fantastic. Thanks, Gretta. I'll leave it there. Appreciate the answers.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Scott Ryall, from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you so much for the briefing. I'm gonna extend on Peter's questioning, just on looking at, I guess the slides where you're outlining the options on your DRI options, so slides 31 and 32, first of all. So as in terms of the partnerships and what's in your, you know, right in your wheelhouse and what's in your partner's wheelhouse, obviously the iron ore side and the steelmaking side, and then the electric. You know, if I look at the decarbonization pathways, DRI stands out as the area where you've got more limited experience.
So I guess I'm wondering if you can give a bit more color and, obviously, Helios is one option that you've got in terms of the partnerships that you've talked through. But I'm just looking at whether or not you think the DRI technologies that are out there at the moment are sufficient for what you need based on what you've seen so far, and whether or not there's any other, you know, potential partnerships that you think can come out of your work across the value chain in that space. And maybe within the answer. Sorry, it's a long-winded question, but maybe within the answer, you can just talk to the timing, your DRI option study.
How are you thinking about timing and milestones at the moment? That would be great.
Thanks, Scott. Yeah, it was a long question. I'll start back at the beginning. In terms of DRI technology, DRI with a magnetite in feed and natural gas is a fully commercial technology at various places in the world at the moment, really dependent on the availability of cheap gas and the appropriate ore. So we would say DRI is quite commercial. DRI based on magnetite ores, however, is less frequently done because the process, being solid state, carries through all of the stuff that isn't iron that then causes huge efficiency loss in downstream, so hence the ESF development to try and remove that gangue from the ore. Yes, what we bring to that partnership with BHP and Rio Tinto is our experience of operating electric smelting furnaces in New Zealand for the last 40 years.
We often talk about that New Zealand process as being quite unique. It is actually a coal-based DRI process on a high gangue ore, so it's got a lot of similarities, but it's not a Pilbara ore. Obviously, our partners, Rio and BHP, understand their ores very, very, very well, and there's a lot of ore processing that needs to be done before feeding them into a DRI plant, such as pelletization. So we've, we have reviewed all of the technologies around the world. There are a couple of different prevailing ones in the DRI space, and you'll notice that we also have POSCO as a technical collaboration partner because they have their own fines-based technology, which although it's less applied commercially, still has some promise.
In terms of other partners, we certainly haven't ruled out bringing other partners into the partnership with BHP and Rio Tinto. That'd need to be for a reason that partner was bringing something additional to bear in that project. For the Australian option study, we're working through that. I haven't got any specific milestones or timing. It really depends. We've identified where perhaps the most likely locations are, and it's really about understanding what the enablers are in terms of the availability of energy in particular, and raw material supply. So we continue to work through that.
All right, great. Thank you. And just one more, I guess, slightly more technical question, but am I right? The electric smelting furnace effectively needs to be right next to the basic oxygen furnace in that prospective pathway chart that you've shown? Because you're then putting hot stuff into the basic oxygen furnace.
Yes, that's correct. An electric smelting furnace produces liquid iron for feed into the next stage, and that stage, it could be a basic oxygen furnace or in another configuration, an electric arc furnace.
Yep. But the DRI plant or equipment doesn't need to be co-located necessarily with the electric smelting furnace. Is that correct?
Yes.
Just technologically speaking, I'm not talking about supply chain.
Yes. Yeah, that's correct. With the DRI plant, that doesn't need to be co-located with your hot metal or liquid metal processing. Typically, there's a passivation step where you'd sort of squish the DRI into a product called HBI, hot briquetted iron, to facilitate its transport. But yeah, there are commercial producers of merchant DRI that aren't co-located with steel plants.
Yep, great. Thank you. That's all I had at this stage, but I may be back. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Young, from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, everyone. Morning, Tim. Oh, can I just ask about, again, slide 31 and the DRI options? Pretty impressive. You've looked at 42 potential configurations. So you've clearly done a lot of work. Just to clarify, one of the options you looked at, putting in a or looking at a DRI and then feeding that directly, that product directly into the blast furnace, like, actually happens in some locations in the U.S.? Or are you looking at, you know, looking at matching it with the BOF as opposed to trying to lift capacity within the blast furnace?
Yeah, the purpose of the option study, Paul, is really to focus on what's the next really major decarbonization step for Port Kembla, which is, you know, a decommissioning of the blast furnace. There's no doubt that you can get some partial abatement of emissions from a blast furnace through the in-feed of DRI, but that is not the focus of the option study.
Okay, thanks. And then I'm really interested in that step before the DRI, because most of the DRI vertical furnaces globally would use pellets. So if you're looking at Pilbara, are you looking at pelletizing that hematite, which is done but on higher grade? Or are you looking but are you looking at pelletizing before you put into the DRI?
Yes, you would need to pelletize it. With the commercially available, DRI technologies at the moment are pelletized. The only one that isn't is that POSCO one, but that's not widely applied.
Yeah, okay, great. And actually, just really interested in the timing, because we're talking about something which is well into the future, and but you have to do the study, and I understand that. But just on the perspective or the looking at what the timing would look like. I mean, you're relining blast furnace number six now. I mean, typically, you get fifteen years out of the blast furnace. I mean, it would it make sense to actually decommission the blast furnace, or is there a scenario where you'd be decommissioning the blast furnace before the end of its life? Is that the idea, or we actually, are you working towards a base case where you introduce DRI at the end of blast furnace number six life?
It we really can't answer that question 'cause it's not a technology question as the rate-limiting step. It's really the availability of the enablers. So it's those sources of energy, particularly. So that's really gonna control the timing of the transition. But we know we have said previously that we're not committed to running the blast furnace necessarily to the end of its service life. It's when it makes sense for us as a business to change.
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Just lastly, about the increase in scrap consumption. I mean, Port Kembla is already using a lot of scrap. It's probably one of the global, you know, I guess, leaders as far as percentage of scrap consumption. What do you think you can lift it to? Is it? Are we talking modest increases here?
We've come a very, very long way over the last few years in terms of the scrap addition. We can see our sites to go a little bit further, but we're probably starting to get pretty close to the limit now. I think our average over the last couple of years, we could probably go, you know, maybe another 10% or so, but that's probably maxing it out. But we are trialing higher scrap percentages, but we still need to implement some more projects to be able to have the amount of energy available to melt that scrap.
Okay, great. So that's... Sorry, that 10% is 10% increase from what you're doing now, or a 10% delta as far as relative to hot metal, so going from 20% to 30%?
Oh, more of a delta, I think.
Okay.
But it's. Yeah. What we can achieve on a trial for a short-term period of time doesn't necessarily meet the long-term average.
Okay, understood. Okay, thanks very much. It's really interesting. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Once again, to ask a question via the phones, please press star one and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Paul McTaggart from Citi. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. Look, I have no doubt we can probably crack the code, right, with enough money thrown at DRI using Pilbara ores. But what I can't figure out for the life of me is... Ultimately, how does this progress? I mean, who's gonna pay for all the CapEx? 'Cause it's gonna be pretty substantial. And to the earlier discussion, obviously, you've got to have, you know, an electric smelter at a steel mill. So is this a partnership with steel mills? Steel mills, are we gonna produce DRI in the Pilbara and ship it as HBI? I mean, I know Fortescue has a proposal to wanna build, do green iron in Australia, but I still struggle in terms of the CapEx.
I mean, it's immense, and if you think of what it would cost to produce just a million tons of this per annum, how do you think this might play out?
Yeah, Paul, that's a very good question, and it's hard to give you a definitive answer because you're right. I mean, there's massive amounts of capital that have to be spent here. You know, we're really excited about the opportunity of working with Rio and BHP, and as we've outlined, the current arrangement is we're equal partners in that relationship. As Greta mentioned earlier, it's not an exclusive relationship, and you know, if other people wanna join us, then that's certainly possible if they're gonna bring something to the party.
And there'll be a divergence, Paul, at a point in time where, you know, for example, if we do crack the code, and we're hopeful we will, that this is gonna become much more important to the iron ore suppliers than it is to us and our need for iron ore. So we would get to a position, I suspect, at some stage, where, you know, our role in this will change because it's gonna require massive amounts of investment, and, you know, certainly, I suspect well beyond our balance sheet. So we're not looking necessarily to play an equal role in this as we go through the development of the process.
We're thrilled to bring our capability to the table and help crack the code, but there is gonna be massive investments in capital. You're right, we've heard stories about green iron coming out of the Pilbara. You know, my view is this is a critical industry and business for Australia, and given the global scale of the business, is there an opportunity to justify that capital expense on the basis that that would then become a supply product or a decarbonized intermediate product that's supplied to blast furnaces all over the world, quite frankly?
We're not necessarily looking to play a role in that, but think there's a great role for us to play in terms of working with Rio and BHP on cracking the code, as we've described it. So look, that's not a definitive answer for you because I don't know that we have a definitive answer yet. We're just gonna go with this, work as hard as we can on the technology side of it, but there's gonna be a point in time where we have to address the commercial questions, and capital's gonna be a part of that, government support's gonna be a part of that. It's not. There's not a simple answer I can give you, I'm sorry, at this stage.
No worries. I don't think there is a simple answer. Thanks, Mark.
Thanks. Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. You have a follow-up question from Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research. Scott, please go ahead.
Thank you. You've got my creative juices going. I had a question on New Zealand. You've more or less done half of your production into the EAF pathway, and you've been very open that scrap availability was the limiting factor there. What has to happen in your view? Like, what has to change in order to be able to move towards 100% production, either through the EAF pathway or alternatively through some of these other pathways that you're investigating? Is it... I guess I'm asking: Does the DRI, the Australian DRI options apply equally to New Zealand, or is there something unique about the New Zealand market that you'd like to see changed?
Yeah, I'll take that one, Scott. So yeah, we've sized the EAF at New Zealand such that we could potentially wind it up further as a percentage, but it will really depend on the availability of the right grades of scrap. But the other considerations, firstly, the iron ore that we have in New Zealand is quite different in its mineralogy, which is why we have a bespoke process over there. But there is still potential for decarbonized reduction of that iron ore, and to that end, we support a research program at Victoria University of Wellington over there on that. So that's one potential pathway, is you create a decarbonized DRI product out of the local ore.
But really, perhaps the easier and more immediate way would be to just further increase the scrap percentage, but it just depends on the availability. It's not a very deep manufacturing base in New Zealand, so there's not a great deal of scrap generated.
Okay, thank you. And then the, as you're looking at the, the pathways, I get the, the point you made earlier around, cheap gas helps and, and you've been, you know, again, open that gas is a, is a necessary pathway, which I 100% agree with. As you look forward at, hydrogen and I guess the, you know, real or, or at least shadow carbon pricing, do you have a view on where the hydrogen price needs to get to and where the carbon price needs to get to so that there's actually a, a crossover here? I know the two are interdependent, but I'm just wondering if you, if you cast your mind to that.
Yeah. And so firstly, there's an enormous amount of water that's gonna have to go under the bridge before we've got the kind of volumes of hydrogen that we would need to you know, produce the iron for a plant the size of Port Kembla. The other thing is that the grid, it needs to be produced from completely green power. So if you produce hydrogen off the current New South Wales grid and used it for DRI, you'd push emissions higher than natural gas, so your grid's got to be below about point one five tons of CO2 per megawatt hour, so you really need a very green grid.
But I think, it's probably out in the public domain that steelmakers, you know, in the current environment, would need their hydrogen very, very low cost, lower than the AUD 2 per kilogram target that's sort of been set in a lot of economies. But then that's based on sort of current cost equivalence, and so where the market moves in terms of, the alternate costs of different green steel producing processes and what happens in terms of things like carbon border adjustment mechanisms will all play into it.
Yeah. Can I just ask you, when you're... Thank you. That was a really good answer. But when you talk about needing the grid to be below 0.15 in terms of carbon intensity, compared to natural gas, is that comparing it to the DRI pathway using natural gas? Is that what you're-
Yes, that's-
That's-
Yes, that's comparing hydrogen DRI to natural gas DRI on a, you know, when does hydrogen actually become lower greenhouse footprint than natural gas, is only with that very, very decarbonized electricity supply.
Understood. Thank you. That was... And then the last one, you talked to my earlier question, you talked about, and also with some other questions about the POSCO technology using powder. Have you looked at the Calix technology, which also uses a powder as well, if you look at the ARENA study that they published, when was it? Earlier this year.
Yes, we're familiar with the Calix technology, and my team and I have visited them. They're just down the road in Bacchus Marsh, so quite easy to do that. Yeah, they've certainly got an interesting technology there and some good facilities, so, you know, we'll maintain ongoing dialogue with them. I think the challenges we see for them are in their scale up, so it's a pretty small-scale process at the moment, and often really good technical solutions don't necessarily preserve their economics in the scale-up case, so that's what we'd be looking for there.
Okay, understood. That's all I had. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Kang from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Just had a quick question in terms of, I guess, as you're going through this and you talk to your customers, what's been the level of, I guess, acceptance of potential willingness to accept higher premium prices for low-carbon steel?
Yes, unfortunately, I would say so far in the market around the world, there's very, very limited green premium for anything resembling a lower emission steel. It's worth pointing out that there actually isn't very much low emission steel actually available for purchase in the world. It's very, very limited tonnages out of small pilot scale plants. But no, the development of green premium doesn't look to be very promising at the moment. Some recent comments out of Cleveland-Cliffs in the U.S., starting to sort of back away from installing a DRI ESF plant at Middletown in Ohio, even with considerable funding from the U.S. government, and they were attributing that to a lack of acceptance of green premiums in the market.
Thanks for the color, Gretta. Also, I just, on slide 10, just looking at the safety charts and, I guess the increase in 2023, 2024, just wondering how much you can attribute that to, the new acquisitions, and probably early days in terms of investigations, but can you just outline for us the, what the findings have been in terms of the, fatalities in FY 2024?
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. I'll take that one. And it goes to a question that we've got online as well around any correlation between our safety performance and length of employment that we've got in from Mans at Ausbil. So look, there's a couple of things I'd say here. We're certainly not blaming our new acquisitions for our performance. What typically happens, as you understand, Dan, you've been with us for a while, when we buy a company, it's invariably at a poorer safety performance than we would typically have, and we give a new business or an acquisition a year before we include their data in our statistics to allow us to get into the business and settle it down.
We've seen, quite frankly, a dramatic improvement in our acquired businesses in terms of their safety performance, particularly the recycling business. We had a very nasty injury in the recycling business in the first year, but their rate of improvement has been extraordinary as they've adapted our approach to safety. So I wouldn't blame our new businesses necessarily. That's a component of the measure, but to Mans's question as well, you know, one of the things that we've found over the last few years, particularly in the tightness of the labor market, people changing their working habits or approach to work, is we've had massive levels of turnover.
I think there's no question that part of our challenge in our performance is a whole bunch of new people in the organization, not necessarily as familiar with our approach, a loss of expertise in the organization. They've been challenges that we've been managing as we've gone through this period of a really busy cycle, full employment, a different approach to work, perhaps, than we've seen in the past. And that's one of the things we're addressing in terms of our refocus on safety, just ensuring that our frontline leaders, in particular, are spending as much time as we can, as they can on the floor, talking to our people, engaging with our people, and dealing with those changes. I'm not blaming our new acquisitions at all.
They've had an impact on our numbers because they typically come in at a higher level than we would have managed. But there's been some challenges over the last few years that we've been dealing with, particularly around turnover, new employees, loss of experience, et cetera, that has certainly made management of this issue more challenging for us.
Thanks, Mark, and just a final one, if I can, in terms of, I think slide 33, collaborations with other global steelmakers. Any insights that you can call out from their own journeys, either good or bad, at this point?
Yeah, I would say in terms of the collaborations that we've got, particularly with Tata Steel Europe and Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe, the commonality in terms of how important the enablers are to their ability to decarbonize is, you know, it's very, very clear. And when you see different rates of progress in the steel industry around the world, you can almost always distill it back to something in those top five. There's been a considerable amount of government grant funding contributed towards the decarbonization projects of our European partners and various mechanisms for assisting with hydrogen gas availability and energy costs as well. So I think it's a commonality of enablers that's been quite clear.
Obviously, in their environment, they've also had a high carbon price, an ETS in place for a very long time, with lots of free unit allocations, which will be phased out over the next few years in favor of the European CBAM. So I think those are some of the factors that, perhaps mean that they're moving a little bit, more quickly than people in other parts of the world.
Thanks, Gretta. Thanks, all.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ellie Davies from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on meeting your 12% intensity reduction target for steelmaking sites by 2030 target early. How would you respond to questions as to whether this target is ambitious enough, given you have met it six years ahead of target? Do you plan to introduce any other interim targets between then and 2050?
Thanks for that, Ellie, and, yeah, we're pretty pleased with it as well, but I will caution that, operationally-based targets are often lumpy, so things do go up and down with production volumes. In terms of questions as to whether this is ambitious enough, certainly felt very ambitious at the time when we set it, given that, you know, we had a broad pathway, but since we set the target, we reached FID on our North Star expansion, which is now complete, and that's contributed a great deal towards the achievement of the target. And also since then, we've, you know, even conceived of the concept of, and are now in execution on, the New Zealand EAF project. So, very pleased with those. We're not planning to update the 2030 target.
We've got a lot of water to go under the bridge to implement those. In terms of future targets, the next step is an interesting question, because the next really big step down would be related to the timing of transition at Port Kembla, and as I think we've communicated in the materials, we really need to work through the enablers for that, and we also have 2035 target setting coming from the Australian government that's underway as well, so choosing a new end date or a new date for the next target is tricky, because we don't know when we're going to be able to meet the big step down at PK, but stay tuned. We're continuing to work through it.
All right, and Ellie, I'd just say also, it certainly doesn't flag that we're gonna stop doing what we need to do to further decarbonize the process. I think that's the critical point. The target, the target's one thing, as Gretta's pointed out, we've said right from the get-go that these targets are lumpy, they're not linear, and they will vary depending on operational issues. And, you know, we like to think that where there's an opportunity for us to do something, we will do it, and the EAF's a great example of that. So you'll see us continue to work on this. Just when and how, and what a new target might be, we'll address.
We don't see that as the most critical issue right now, but it's in no way reducing our focus on how we further continue to decarbonize the process where it makes sense for us.
Thank you.
Thanks, Ellie.
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Tim Rodsted to address your webcast questions.
Thanks, operator. So we've got a few questions that have come through online. The first one I'll start with is in relation to BlueScope recently joining the HILT CRC, and the question relates to: What projects is the company interested in participating, and is there a reason why it took the company three years to join the collaboration initiative?
Sure. So in terms of the three years, I guess we've observed Hilt from a distance and regularly discussed with him through that period of time. But we, to be honest, we're just busy focusing on our direct collaborations with the partners that we have and doing that work. But recently, HILT CRC's expanded its focus to include policy and infrastructure, which are areas which are directly relevant to our decarbonization enablers. So that presents really valuable opportunity for us to contribute to and benefit from the collective efforts of that group. We haven't funded any specific research projects yet, but obviously, there's a number of projects that HILT CRC are doing that relate to the use of Pilbara ores in decarbonized steelmaking that are of great interest to us.
Thanks, Gretta. The next question we have is in relation to access to scrap metal. Mark?
Yeah, so we touched on this a little bit in terms of the percentage of scrap metal we've continued to push through the process in Port Kembla. The way we think about scrap, obviously, is very regionally driven. New scrap agreements we've announced or talked about in New Zealand to support the investment in the EAF. We have strong scrap relationships and supply chains that have been built over many years in Australia and think that is suitable for our requirements. And then, of course, we've taken a more active and overt position in the scrap business in North America around North Star. So something we monitor, obviously, continuously, and where we feel we need to alter our approach to the scrap market, we will do that.
Again, just to reiterate, you've heard me say this in financial presentations. We're not looking to build a standalone scrap business anywhere, quite frankly. What we would do if it was a change in ownership or structure around scrap in any of our markets, it would be focused very much on supply for our own production facilities.
Thanks, Mark. The next question relates to offset. So what percentage of emissions would BlueScope have to rely on to offset at the Net Zero 2050 goal? Gretta?
On our decarbonization waterfall charts, which are available in the presentation, you will have noted, I'm sure that's the source of the question, a very small box at the extreme right-hand side that says, "Offsets for residual." The answer is: It depends on the technology that we ultimately go with to decarbonize our steelmaking. If I can use Port Kembla as an example, if we ended up with hydrogen DRI to make our iron for Port Kembla, that represents about an 85% reduction in greenhouse footprint compared with the current blast furnace. The residual carbon that's there, it depends on what's available at the time in terms of renewable energy. Are we, at that point, in a market that is awash in biogas, for example, biomethane?
Do we have access to Biochar supply chains for carbonaceous materials? So it really depends. In an ideal world, it's very, very small, and that's. We're focusing our time and attention on the direct abatements rather than building any portfolio of offsets.
Thanks, Gretta. The next question relates to electricity, which we've touched on a little bit today through the presentation. And the question is, is BlueScope relying on the grid to become greener, or is it looking into securing access to renewable energy through PPAs, et cetera? David?
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. Look, the short answer is both are important, but we do look at securing renewable energies with PPAs, primarily where it makes sense for our operations. So we have that in Australia through a PPA through solar and in New Zealand to support the EAF. That'll be supported by a PPA backed by geothermal power. But again, you know, it needs to work in the context of our operations, and the grid becoming greener is a key enabler for electricity supply, which becomes much more important as we look to some of the transition steps that we've outlined today.
Thanks, David. Next question touches on the scenario analysis work that we've updated this year, Gretta, and it relates to the physical risk assessment. So did BlueScope look at impacts on critical and supporting infrastructure it relies on, including utilities?
Yeah. So every time we do our physical risk assessment, we sort of extend and develop it a little bit more. So to a small extent this year, yes, in that for the first time, we looked at critical supply chain elements into our major steelmaking facilities. We didn't cover, say, power utilities this time around. However, the companies that run those businesses do that physical risk assessment for themselves, so I don't think that we need to do that for them. But we certainly did look at some of the impacts on supply chain, such as, you know, rail transport, for example.
Thanks, Gretta. Next question is, in terms of feasibility and cost effectiveness, at this stage, which option is BlueScope considering a better bet for decarbonization, CCUS or biochar? Gretta?
Yeah. They're both long bets, aren't they? So CCUS, interestingly, I read quite a good report on the application of CCS and CCUS from the IEEFA recently for steelmaking, so that's not a bad one to reference. The prevailing view is that CCUS won't play a major role in blast furnace decarbonization, at least just because of the multiple emission sources and the diffuse nature. In a future state where you have a DRI, depending on the technology, you may well have a very concentrated stream of gas that CCUS may be more applicable to... Biochar could play a role in either the blast furnace in the medium term or, later on for the carburizer in steelmaking.
The challenge with biochar is really the development of the supply chain for the kind of quantities we're talking about, and given a broader sustainability lens on how do you make that biochar in a sustainable way that's not negatively impacting on land use, water, those types of things. So both long bets, and we are including both of them in our areas of attention.
Thanks, Gretta. So the next question we've got is in relation to capital. So David, I'll come to you on this one: how is the capital gonna be allocated over the next few years, given the budget we've secured for the four focus areas of steelmaking that we've highlighted?
Yeah. In terms of the allocation process, I guess there's two relevant pieces. One is we have an elevated level of CapEx within our existing business that we're working through. As I mentioned, they often have sustainability benefits built into them, but are not included in the capital for climate-specific projects. The climate-specific projects that will form the material part of the next few years will really sit behind the new-- the completion of the New Zealand EAF and the pilot study around the BHP and Rio collaboration.
Thanks, David. So the next question I've got in line is related to safety, which is, can you remind us in terms of the management incentives and how they're linked to the TRIFR outcomes?
Yeah. So we have a link to the management incentives around TRIFR outcomes, also around some of the leading indicators that we pursue in critical risk projects, for example. So there's 10% in total of management incentives in that space. And fair to say that management got zero in FY 2024, given the deterioration in the rate, notwithstanding the fact we achieved 100% of our project objectives, but none of us received anything in FY 2024 because of the deterioration in the TRIFR outcomes.
Thanks, Mark. And the question we've got now comes back to renewables. So when looking at renewable PPAs, are we looking at hourly matched or firmed? And how are we looking at the additionality of those PPAs from the generation they produce?
Yeah, no. So where it's supporting steelmaking, it needs to be an effectively firm offering, which we incorporate into our work. For other areas of the business that are less intensive, we might utilize renewable generation ourselves or sourcing that is not firmed. But for the vast majority of our requirements, it needs to be a firmed requirement.
Thanks, David. Now, we've got no more questions that have come through on the webcast, or it looks like on the phone, so Mark, I might hand back to you just to wrap us up.
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. Look, thank you, everybody, for turning up today. Hopefully, the documents, which the team have put an enormous amount of work into, are helpful to you in terms of clarifying the work we're doing and the strategy in the ESG space. So appreciate your time today, and we look forward to seeing you over the next week or two. All the best. Thank you.