In March of this year the Slovakian Environmental Agency completed its assessment of the fifth and final monitoring report and confirmed that the projects for increased de-dusting on USSK blast furnaces 2 and 3 have demonstrated their sustainability. U. S. Steel Košice has thus fulfilled all obligations imposed in the EU grant contract. Back in 2014 we applied for a subsidy from EU funds within the Operational Program Environment, and we completed installation of new textile filters above the cast houses of blast furnaces 2 and 3 in 2015.
We obtained a subsidy of six million euros from the EU, representing around 35 percent of the total investment costs, and USSK invested a further 11 million euros plus into the project. By improving the dust filtration on these two blast furnaces, over the next five years we reduced particulate matter emissions cumulatively by more than 1200 tons, which on average means improvement by 90 percent. The return on investment associated with this capital expenditure for reducing environmental harm caused by those emissions was achieved within a period of one year. All three of our blast furnaces currently have their particulate emissions limit set at < 15 mg/m3, whereas their actual performance is 1 – 3 mg/m3, which means we are running at around 20 percent of permitted values.
Other projects for reducing emissions similar to that on the blast furnaces are progressively being implemented on the cokery, sintering and steel shops operations. This is not the only field in which development is going ahead, moreover, and replacement of technologies with more modern and more efficient types is a continuous processs. This naturally incurs costs, however, and for the Company to be able to invest in environmental protection, it must first and foremost be economically successful.
