Billionaires aren’t going to save the planet: Lakshmi Mittal, the steel industry’s pollution, monoculture plantations, and carbon credits
While communities in Brazil have seen their water supplies dry up, Mittal’s company is cashing in on carbon credits from its eucalyptus plantations.
Lakshmi Mittal is an Indian billionaire who made his money through the steel industry. In 2006, his company Mittal Steel bought Arcelor to form ArcelorMittal, which is currently the world’s second largest steel manufacturing company. Mittal got the nickname “King of Steel”.
In 2008, Mittal was the richest man in Europe, worth US$45 billion. (According to Forbes he is currently worth US$30 billion.) In 2008, he bought a £117 million house in Kensington for his son Aditya. The house was, at the time, Britain’s most expensive house. Mittal lived in a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, one of the most expensive residential streets in the world, long known as “Billionaires’ Row”.
From 2008 to March 2026, he was a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs.
His daughter’s wedding cost £55 million — more than Jeff Bezos’ wedding.
Mittal currently owns a Bombadier Global 7500 private jet. According to the BBC he often flies for more than 1,000 hours a year in his jet. In one week in June 2026, he flew between New York, Geneva, Paris, and London.
He also owns a 112 metre luxury superyacht.
While he donates to charities, including the Prince’s Trust and the NSPCC, and to the UK Labour Party (£5 million while Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were prime ministers), Mittal prefers to avoid paying tax. His houses are owned by companies registered in the tax haven of Jersey.
In November 2025, after three decades living in the UK, Mittal left the country. His move followed the government’s crackdown on non-domiciled UK residents. People with non-dom status could avoid paying UK tax on foreign income and gains. The Times reported that inheritance tax was another reason for Mittal leaving the UK.
Mittal is now resident in the tax haven of Switzerland where he owns a huge chalet overlooking St Moritz. He is reported to spend much of his time in Dubai, where he owns a mansion and property in a luxury development on Naia Island, Dubai.
Last week, Mittal wrote an article in the Financial Times in which he argued for the reform of the EU Emissions Trading System to protect Europe’s steel industry. “Low-cost, low-emissions energy sources for steel and other energy-intensive sectors remain elusive,” Mittal wrote.
[T]he issue of greatest concern for the steel industry and other “hard to abate” energy-intensive industries is the rapid and large increase in planned ETS costs over the next five years. By the early 2030s, assuming no free CO₂ allowances and a carbon price of €150 a tonne, we calculate the cost of steel made in the EU will have increased by about 50 per cent. This will be a direct result of the additional CO₂ costs imposed by the ETS.
The Belgian think tank Sandbag has been monitoring the EU Emissions Trading System since 2008. In a recent briefing, Sandbag challenges the claims that the steel industry is harmed by the ETS and argues that the opposite is true. “EU steelmakers will greatly benefit from the EU’s carbon market,” Sandbag states.
But while Mittal is critical of carbon trading when his company has to pay, another Mittal company, Aperam, a stainless steel manufacturer, generates carbon credits from its vast eucalyptus monocultures in Brazil.
Aperam BioEnergia’s monocultures
Aperam BioEnergia is a Brazilian subsidiary of Aperam that produces charcoal from eucalyptus plantations to feed blast furnaces for iron production. Aperam BioEnergia owns about 124,000 hectares of land in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley, Minas Gerais, of which two-thirds is covered with monoculture eucalyptus plantations.
Aperam gains carbon credits by applying biochar to the soil in its plantations. According to the Puro Earth the company can generate 70,000 carbon credits per year. Buyers include Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, International Workplace Group (formerly Regus), The All England Lawn Tennis Club, Deutsche Bank, and Carbon Finance Labs.
Aperam claims to be “carbon neutral” or even “carbon positive” because it uses charcoal from plantations which are replanted. But when the charcoal is burned, it releases the carbon stored in the wood to the atmosphere — which contributes to global heating. In addition, in 2023, Aperam used 6.5 million litres of diesel, 475,000 litres of petrol, and 1,300 MWh of electricity.
The plantations have their origins in Brazil’s military dictatorship. In 1976, the state handed over almost 100,000 hectares of land to Acesita, the state-owned steel company. Some of the land was used by local farmers, but it was legally owned by the state. The Cerrado savanna ecosystem was converted to monocultures of eucalyptus to produce charcoal to fire Acesita’s steel mills.
In 2011, Acesita and its plantations were bought by Aperam.
FSC greenwashes water sucking monocultures
Communities in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley have seen their water sources dry up since the eucalyptus plantations were established. “Almost all the springs have dried up, and the Rio Fanado, the only remaining river, is polluted,” one resident of Alto Jequitinhonha Valley told Mongabay.
Among the communities living in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley are quilombos, settlements set up by formerly enslaved Africans. They are among the most marginalised communities in the valley.
In a 2025 Mongabay article, Daniel Camargos, Emmanuelle Picaud, and Simone Fant write that,
While hundreds of quilombola families struggle to secure water for farming and daily needs in this drought-prone region, Aperam labels its forestry operations as sustainable. Yet its certification by the Forest Stewardship Council has been criticized for failing to address water security issues and community needs.
The plantations were first certified in 2006.
A 2022 study by researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais documents how the fast-growing tree plantations have dried out water supplies for local communities. Forestry operations are highly mechanised and Aperam has created few jobs.
The Vicente Nica Center for Alternative Agriculture (CAV) supports more than 2,500 farming families in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley. CAV has been urging Aperam to address the impacts of its plantations for more than a decade.
In November 2020, CAV and 40 other organisations from Brazil, Italy, and Switzerland filed a complaint with FSC. They demanded the suspension of Aperam’s FSC certificate. Bureau Veritas, a certifying body under the FSC system, raised a “minor non-conformity” about local water supply and recommended that Aperam carry out a study.
In 2024, FSC commissioned Assurance Services International (ASI) to carry out a compliance assessment of Bureau Veritas. ASI found that Aperam’s environmental impact assessments were inadequate and failed to address water depletion issues.
Camargos, Picaud, and Fant write that,
ASI also flagged BV’s failure to gauge the seriousness of CAV’s allegations and whether these claims constituted a “minor or major non-conformity” — an issue that, if left unresolved within the time frame for the assessment, should have led to a suspension of Aperam’s FSC certification. In August 2024, Aperam replaced BV with another FSC-accredited body, the Brazil-based Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora). Aperam has until May to provide more detailed documentation of its environmental impact.
In January 2026, ASI raised four “minor non-conformities” with Imaflora’s certification of Aperam. ASI states that these non-conformities “indicate areas for improvement” but took no action against Imaflora as long as Imaflora subsequently addresses the non-conformities. Aperam’s water sucking monocultures remain certified as “well-managed” under the FSC system.
Aperam did not respond to Mongabay’s specific questions, instead listing a series of social and environmental programmes that the company carries out.
IFC funding
In 2025, the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector lending arm announced a US$250 million funding package. This consisted of a US$150 million loan from the IFC and US$100 million from other lenders, including the Dutch bank ING.
Aperam BioEnergia will use the money to expand its plantations and nursery operations and expand charcoal production capacity, improve kiln efficiency, and set up a bio-oil business line using by-products from charcoal production.
In a statement, Olaf Schmidt, regional industry director at IFC, commented,
“We are pleased to establish this partnership with Aperam to foster innovative solutions in the steel industry. This investment underscores IFC’s commitment to sustainable development and environmental stewardship. By supporting such project, IFC aims to provide innovative solutions that benefit both the economy and the environment.”
Bank Information Center raises a series of concerns about IFC’s financing of Aperam ranging from lack of information and inadequate due diligence to social and environmental concerns.
Aperam will buy a total of 42,600 hectares of land with the IFC loan. The company has already bought 29,600 hectares of which one-third is already plantations. The remainder includes, Legal Reserves, Permanent Protected Areas, and land under natural regeneration.
Bank Information Center writes that,
IFC states that the company has refused to disclose to IFC the location of a 13,000 hectare property to be acquired as part of the project, citing that making this information public could impact its operation.
Aperam’s expansion could result in further damage to Quilombola livelihoods and lands. Quilombola communities are recognised as traditional people under the Brazilian constitution and laws, and under ILO Convention 169 — which guarantees their rights to land, consultation, and self-determination.
Because Aperam refuses to say where 13,000 hectares of its expansion will be, Quilombola communities don’t even know which communities will be affected.
In October 2025, Global Forest Coalition interviewed Karen Lang,1 a researcher and agroforestry specialist, who had recently visited communities in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley. Lang spoke about the impacts of the plantations on water supply:
In the communities that I visited, many of them, most of their natural water springs have dried up. Many rely on municipal water trucks for their water supply during the dry season, which is terrible because there are issues about the quality of water. The water is not treated in most cases. These people have to leave their communities and go into the city to request the water truck, which can take two weeks, it can take a month to come. So you can imagine what it would be like for people to have to constantly ration their water.
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/eucalyptus-for-brazils-steelmaking-dries-out-communities-in-minas-gerais/
https://www.aperam.com/sites/default/files/documents/PR_Aperam__IFC_Partnership.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshmi_Mittal
https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct8c9m
https://www.globaldata.com/company-profile/aperam-sa/
https://www.aperam.com/sites/default/files/documents/Aperam_CS_Report_2024.pdf
https://www.aperam.com/sites/default/files/documents/Aperam_AnnualReport_2025.pdf
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-aperam-bioenergia-became-largest-producer-charcoal-sud-sivaji-gbygf/
https://web.archive.org/web/20251108030301/https://ewsdata.rightsindevelopment.org/projects/48478-aperam-brazil/
https://puro.earth/cdr-credit-suppliers/facilities/aperam-bioenergia/
https://live.euronext.com/en/products/equities/company-news/2024-04-02-aperam-bioenergia-kicks-patch-partnership-selling-15000
No relation.
I'd imagine this kind of journalism is often pretty thankless, but I for one am grateful for it. Keep up this most vital and critical work Chris, thank you.