It is imperative to tackle the issue globally mobilizing all available policies and measures. One of the important ones among them is technology transfer and diffusion. By utilizing international cooperation, industry can promote such measures in two ways: through government policy and through industry's own voluntary initiative. Needless to say, various government policies and measures play essential role. By the same token, industry initiative can complement them. There is much literature documenting the former. On the contrary there are few on the latter. This paper sheds light on the latter. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of global voluntary sectoral approach for technology diffusion and transfer based on steel sector experience. The goal is to contribute toward building a worldwide low-carbon society by manufacturing goods with less energy through international cooperation of each sector. The authors believe that the voluntary sectoral approach is an effective method with political and practical feasibilities, and hope to see the continued growth of more initiatives based on this approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.