MMK reduces Comprehensive Air Pollution Index in Magnitogorsk 2.5-fold since 2017
This was announced by Grigory Shchurov, MMK's Director for Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Protection, speaking at a round table titled “Talking straight: the whole truth about atmospheric emissions”, held within the framework of the business programme of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation’s Community Forum.
In 2015, MMK has implemented a Strategic Development Plan up to 2025; one of its key goals is to reduce atmosphere emissions drastically. By now, MMK’s efforts in this field have already resulted in the Comprehensive Air Pollution Index in Magnitogorsk dropping 2.5-fold since 2017. MMK’s strategy implies reducing the values of the index to 5 by 2025, with Magnitogorsk reaching the Clean City status (according to Russia’s governmental standards).
“Implementation of our comprehensive action plan within the Clean Air federal project that MMK participates in will decrease the total pollutant emissions in the city of Magnitogorsk by 48,000 tonnes or 23% from 2017 by 2024,” Grigory Shchurov, MMK's Director for Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Protection, noted. He also mentioned that the construction of a modern sinter plant No. 5, which complies with the best global technologies, was an outstanding example of MMK's environmental investments. The launch of the sinter plant allowed MMK to decommission obsolete equipment at sinter plant No.4, which significantly reduced the plant’s environmental impact.
Other significant environmental projects of MMK in recent years include the construction of aspiration systems for foundry yards and bunker rooms at six blast furnaces, the reconstruction of a gas-cleaning unit of a twin-hearth furnace and a sulfur trapping unit in the sinter shop.
Today, MMK’s key environmental activities include the construction of coke oven battery complex No. 12 and gas cleaning plants in steel workshops; the construction of new blast furnace No. 12 is planned. Implementation of these projects will let MMK decommission five old coke oven batteries and three blast furnaces with outdated equipment.
Furthermore, MMK strongly supports worldwide efforts to combat climate change and adopts greenhouse gas emission-reduction initiatives. MMK's goal is to reduce specific greenhouse gas emissions to 1.8 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per tonne of steel by 2025.