ArcelorMittal cuts 2030 climate target by more than half, marking a regressive shift, SteelWatch report says
4 May 2026, Luxembourg — The global steel giant ArcelorMittal moved beyond delaying investment decisions to openly retreating from the climate commitments it made back in 2021, according to a new report by SteelWatch. The most significant shift is ArcelorMittal’s decision to cut its 2030 emissions intensity reduction target from 25% to “up to 10%,” while dropping its Europe-specific target of 35% altogether. The company also now supports revisiting the EU ETS free allocation phase-out and ETS cap.
Published on the eve of the company’s Annual General Meeting in Luxembourg, SteelWatch’s Corporate Climate Assessment Report 2026 Update — Unmasking a deliberate retreat — documents the company’s continued pattern of low decarbonisation spending, prolonged reliance on blast furnace production and backing out of climate investments, made explicit as a deliberate choice in the company’s Sustainability Report 2025.
The report highlights a consistent and deeply worrying pattern with ArcelorMittal’s corporate decisions, given its operational scale and influence:
- No structural decarbonisation: Portfolio reshuffling masks CO2 intensity increase in 2025.
- Decarbonisation capex remains marginal: only USD 1.1 billion out of USD 19.8 billion spent between 2021 and 2025.
- No additional large-scale decarbonisation project before the early 2030s. Previously announced DRI projects effectively abandoned.
“ArcelorMittal is no longer simply falling short of its climate strategy. It is rewriting it downwards. By slashing its 2030 milestone and dropping its Europe-specific target, the company has stripped its net-zero claim of any credible delivery pathway,” said Pascal Husting, SteelWatch Associate.
The report also points to a fundamental shift in ArcelorMittal’s position on European climate policy. While the company has welcomed CBAM and stronger trade protection for improving the outlook for its European business, it now supports revisiting both the phase-out of free allowances under the EU ETS and the overall ETS cap — directly challenging the core mechanism designed to drive industrial decarbonisation.
“ArcelorMittal cannot welcome CBAM and trade protection while seeking to weaken the ETS mechanism that makes industrial decarbonisation viable. This is not transition leadership. It is an attempt to preserve the economics of blast furnace-based production,” Husting said.
Steel accounts for around 10% of global CO2 emissions, and ArcelMittal remains one of the sector’s most influential companies. The report concludes that ArcelorMittal should now be judged not by its stated ambitions, but by what it actually invests in, what it decides to keep running and what policies it seeks to influence.
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Contacts
Pascal Husting
Associate, SteelWatch (Luxembourg, CEST)
[email protected]
+352621887730
Caroline Ashley
Director, SteelWatch (Luxembourg, CEST)
[email protected]
+44 7947 691 911
Gozde Incegul
Communications, SteelWatch (Türkiye, CEST)
[email protected]
+90 537 583 5442
Notes
- Find SteelWatch’s Corporate Climate Assessment 2026 Update “Unmasking a deliberate retreat”: https://steelwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/26-05-Unmasking-a-deliberate-retreat-AM-CCAR-update-2026.pdf
- ArcelorMittal Sustainability Report 2025: https://cdn.arcelormittal.com/media/kyqeahax/2025-sd-report-22-april-2026-final-upload.pdf
- Capital allocation and project sequencing: According to the report, ArcelorMittal’s retreat is also embedded in how it allocates capital. The company operates within a fixed annual capex envelope and sequences decarbonisation projects rather than scaling them, with no parallel transformation across major sites. The Durkirk EAF, often presented as a reference project, does not address the core challenge of decarbonising ironmaking. There is no corresponding investment in DRI and no credible timeline for replacing blast furnace capacity at scale.
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