Steel plant energy recovery: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
These systems are built into steelworks. Their value is the coke, gas and power a plant no longer has to buy, so coking coal, natural gas and grid tariffs, along with steel output, decide how quickly they pay back.
No public price Steel plant energy recovery has no public monthly price series: Part of steelworks investment; no separate price series.What its price moves with
Recovery equipment is installed as steelworks are built or upgraded, so steel output and margins set investment. Large integrated plants in China and India are the main market. Steel recovery has no price series, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Coke ovens turn coking coal into coke and release coke oven gas, which plants burn for heat and power. Coke dry quenching recovers heat from hot coke, so dear coking coal raises the value of every unit of energy saved.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Recovered blast furnace, coke oven and converter gases replace natural gas in reheating furnaces and power plants. Where gas is expensive, as in Europe and India, using these gases fully saves more money.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Coke oven gas is rich in hydrogen, which some plants now separate for use or plan to feed into hydrogen-based ironmaking. This turns a by-product into a valuable chemical feedstock.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Heat from sinter coolers, coke quenching and furnaces raises steam for turbines, the same steam Rankine systems used in cement plants. This is the main way steelworks turn waste heat into electricity.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Top-pressure recovery turbines use the high pressure of blast furnace gas to make power before the gas is burned. They are one of the cheapest forms of recovery and standard on large furnaces.
No public price for pressure and flow recovery, so the link is explained in words only.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.