New Delhi, Oct. 27 -- As climate change intensifies and the world shifts towards lower-carbon industries, India wants to nearly triple its steelmaking capacity by 2047 while reducing emissions from production.

Steel is absolutely essential to infrastructure and manufacturing but producing more of it, even more efficiently, does not necessarily mean reducing overall emissions.

India's draft National Steel Policy Vision 2047 needs to address this tension more directly because decisions made today will shape the industry's carbon footprint for decades.

The scale of the challenge is clear. The draft seeks to raise steelmaking capacity to 604 million tonnes a year by 2047 and reduce emissions intensity from 2.54 tonnes of carbon dioxide per...