The steel industry faces a huge challenge to transform towards decarbonization. New technologies, plants, energies and media create a lot of technical challenges but also substantial demand for new know-how.

The industry also faces a transformation within its workforce due to numerous retirements. Young talents are scarce and often have a rather critical perception of the steel industry relating it to emissions and low innovation. These two challenges have to be tackled at the same time, unfortunately under very high economical pressure. The next few years will decide about the survival of the steel industry and about achieving CO2 mitigation targets.

While a lot of activities have been performed on technical R&D and on recruiting and skilling, the SUPER project follows a fresh approach which combines both topics with the focus on synergies supporting both challenges. Synergies are expected by linking R&D activities on local/national/EU level, along the maturity progress to industrial implementation but also with cross-industrial view. Interdisciplinary communication and cooperation are in the very center of this activity, beyond technical and social disciplines.

Digitalisation can provide synergies for both transformations, however, also needs new skills and well-coordinated implementation. Thus, skilling is a key enabler, and it has to go along with image building. It is imperative for the sector to show its high potential to mitigate emissions and to be innovative. SUPER performs talent training (RACE), desk research and stakeholder consultations and initiates interdisciplinary know-how dissemination and networking. Results and feedback are exploited into recommendations for future activities and policy initiatives to leverage the synergies. This comprehensive approach is enabled by the strong involvement of the project and the consortium partners into current activities and the ESTEP community.