The more I read on how the world will transition to green steel,...

The more I read on how the world will transition to green steel, the more that I realise that there are substantial challenges to achieving something close to net zero carbon emissions for the world's steel production. It is going to take BILLIONS being spent on research and development projects and then more BILLIONS in developing new infrastructure to process and manufacture steel in a different way - and even if there is a good solution for how to make green steel, how will the world get enough of the other inputs to make large quantities using that process. Whilst there are likely to be a number of solutions, even if one quarter of the worlds coal fired blast furnaces were to be replaced with hydrogen, that is still a heck of a lot of green hydrogen that needs to be produced somewhere and transported to where the steel is to be made (and where will all the green energy come from to make all that green hydrogen).

However, I don't think it would be RIO and BHP as the prime candidates for HIO & MGT (unless Braemar iron ore is good for blending with their other ores). They have vast resources of ore for which there is no solution to use most WA Pilbara ores that to make green steel using currently available and commercial processes. I think the likes of BHP and RIO will spend their time and money to work out how to rescue those ores from extinction - and I think that they have enough money to throw at the process to get a solution. The question is, what capital investment will be required for all parts of the supply chain and what will it do the total cost of mining, beneficiation of ore and steel production.

And then you have all this magnetite ore sitting in the ground, ready to be used to make green steel using existing processes etc. Even if it costs a little more to dig up and process to a high grade ore, the total cost of production of green steel still has a high probability of being cheaper than other (yet to be commercialised) ways to produce green steel.

Therefore, I think the question is:

Wouldn't you think that steel producers would want to secure a long term supply of iron ore which can be used to manufacture green steel using known processes and known costs of production?