UK construction companies are increasingly weighing steel’s carbon footprint in procurement, but their willingness to pay for lower-emission material is constrained by project costs. Discussions at the Future of Green Steel conference in London on 28–29 October indicated that sustainability-related costs generally need to stay below approximately 2% of total project value to be commercially acceptable.
The discussions involved British construction companies, public-sector project developers, steel producers, and Serbian and Southeast European fabricators. Buyers showed growing interest in environmental product declarations as a practical way to assess emissions associated with structural steel. Public-sector projects were identified as an emerging source of demand, particularly where procurement rules require developers to demonstrate environmental performance.
A bridge-project tender showed that buyers may accept a sizeable premium on a material when its effect on the overall construction budget is limited. The tender included steel from an electric-arc-furnace supply chain at a 5–10% premium on the material price. Premiums of €100–300 per tonne can add considerably to the cost of individual steel products without necessarily having a comparable effect on a project’s total budget.
Buyers indicated that environmental product declarations often determine their preferred materials, while they have relatively limited appetite for complex debates over green-steel classification systems. Those debates matter to steelmakers: scrap-based electric-arc-furnace production can deliver relatively low-emission steel, while integrated blast-furnace producers pursuing alternative ironmaking technologies may face much larger investment requirements.
Industrial policy therefore faces a choice between classifications that reward existing low-emission output and frameworks that provide additional support for transforming emissions-intensive production. Credible environmental documentation may become increasingly important for Serbian and Southeast European fabricators seeking UK construction and infrastructure contracts. The emerging market advantage lies in documenting lower-emission performance in a form usable by both customers and regulators.
Product declarations do not automatically replace emissions verification under the UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which is due to begin on 1 January 2027 and creates separate requirements for covered steel imports. A supplier may need both a product carbon-footprint declaration for customer procurement and installation-level emissions evidence that meets the relevant CBAM calculation rules.
