Green Steel
Low-Carbon Structural Steel
American Katerra’s Green Steel is low-carbon structural steel for projects that have to account for embodied carbon. More owners, designers, and public agencies now ask for the carbon footprint of the steel they buy, alongside its price and grade. Green Steel answers that: the structural performance you specify, fabricated through a lower-carbon supply chain, with the documentation to back it up.
What Green Steel is
Green Steel is the structural steel you already specify, the beams, columns, and connections of a project, sourced and fabricated to lower its embodied carbon. The thinking behind it is our trademarked Green & Blue Carbon Steel™ approach, developed within our parent group and applied here in the U.S.
How We Lower the Carbon
We look for reductions across sourcing and fabrication, then measure them. Our digital workflow, built on BIM and life cycle assessment, lets us estimate the footprint of a steel package and act on it before production starts.
Documentation for specifiers
For teams that report embodied carbon, we provide the underlying data. Our embodied-carbon page explains how we document and disclose it, and our life cycle assessment service extends that to whole-project reporting.
Works with your structural steel package
Green Steel carries the same scope as our structural steel fabrication. Specify it for all or part of a package, with the same detailing, quality control, and delivery.
What Makes Steel Green
Green steel is steel produced and delivered with substantially lower CO2 emissions than conventional supply. The reductions come from a set of measurable levers: recycled scrap content, electric arc furnace (EAF) production, cleaner energy at the mill, efficient fabrication, and shorter logistics.
Related terms describe the same direction. Decarbonized steel and lower-embodied-carbon steel refer to reductions that can be measured today, while carbon neutral steel and net zero steel describe the end goal. American Katerra focuses on the reductions we can document now, guided by the Green & Blue Carbon Steel™ approach.
Most green steel companies focus on how the material is made at the mill. As a fabricator, American Katerra connects that lower-carbon material to your project: we source it, fabricate it in San Antonio, and hand over the embodied-carbon documentation with the steel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is green steel?
Green steel is structural steel produced and supplied with significantly lower CO2 emissions across the supply chain, through levers such as recycled content, EAF production, and cleaner energy. American Katerra supplies it as a fabricated package with embodied-carbon documentation.
Is green steel as strong as conventional structural steel?
Yes. Green Steel from American Katerra uses the same grades and specifications you already use. The structural performance you specify stays the same; what changes is the carbon footprint of the supply chain behind it.
How is green steel documented for LEED or ESG reporting?
We provide embodied-carbon data for the fabricated package and can extend it with life cycle assessment for whole-project reporting. Specifiers receive the underlying numbers in a format they can report against.
Does American Katerra supply green steel for structural packages in the U.S.?
Yes. American Katerra fabricates and supplies green steel for structural packages from San Antonio, Texas, for projects across the United States. You can specify it for all or part of a package with the same detailing, quality control, and delivery as our structural steel fabrication.
Contact Us
If embodied carbon is on your project’s scorecard, talk to us about Green Steel. Send us your drawings and specification, and we will show you what a lower-carbon package looks like, with the documentation to back it up. Request a quote or talk to a project engineer.