The article's conclusion - sounds like degrowth to me.
"The low-tech solutions
The picture painted above seems to offer little hope for carbon-neutral steelmaking and power production. However, there is a low-tech solution that could achieve it. We could adjust steel production to the available scrap supply both in quantity and quality. That would allow us to produce all steel from scrap in electric arc furnaces, dramatically reducing energy consumption and eliminating almost all carbon emissions. Of course, the intent should not be to replace steel with plastic composites and aluminum because they are even more energy-intensive to produce. The only solution is to reduce material use overall.
We could adjust steel production to the available scrap supply both in quantity and quality.
Reducing the steel output and using more common steel grades would not bring us back to the Bronze Age. As noted, global end-of-life ferrous scrap availability was approximately 450 Mt in 2021, which would allow us to produce roughly one-quarter of the current steel output. Furthermore, the scrap supply will continue to rise for the next 40 years, enabling us to produce more and more low-emission steel each year. By 2050, scrap availability is expected to rise to about 900 Mt, almost half of today’s global steel production.48 All that extra steel could be invested in expanding the low-carbon power grid without raising emissions first.
There is a lot of room to reduce the steel intensity of modern society. All our basic needs – and more – could be supplied with much less steel involved. For example, we could make cars lighter by making them smaller. That would bring energy savings without the need for energy-intensive high-grade steel. We could replace cars with bicycles and public transportation so that more people share less steel. Such changes would also reduce the need for steel in the road network, the energy infrastructure, and the manufacturing industry. We would need fewer machine tools, shipping containers, and reinforced concrete buildings. Whenever steel intensity is reduced, the advantages cascade throughout the whole system. Preventing corrosion and producing steel more locally from local resources would also reduce energy use and emissions.1014
The continuous growth of the steel output – the increasing steel intensity of human society – makes sustainable steel production impossible. No technology can change that because it’s not a technological problem. Like forestry can only be sustainable if the wood demand does not exceed the wood supply, steel is sustainable or not depending on the balance between (scrap) supply and (steel) demand. We may not be able to escape the Iron Age, but we have an option to escape the catch-22 that inextricably links steel production with fossil fuels."
breadandcircuses