On March 25, 2024, the US Department of Energy announced that Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown steel mill has been selected for up to $575 million in total funding to decarbonize Middletown Works. Cliffs will be shutting down their heavily polluting blast furnace in favor of a DRI plant and two electric melting furnaces to supply the mill. (See https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Green-Steel-in-the-Ohio-River-Valley-FINAL-6.pdf for more information on this new technology.) The mill will no longer be using coal for coke production.
The steel industry accounts for about 11 percent of global climate pollution due to its reliance on coal, according to Industrious Labs. Building the first green steel plants in the United States will drive the industry to a drastic reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions.
Additionally, this shift will result in significant reduction in pollution (soot, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide, and toxics from coal) of thousands of tons, just in Middletown.
More direct benefits to Middletown include retaining 2,500 existing union jobs, creating 7,200 construction jobs and an additional 710 permanent jobs at Cleveland Cliffs facilities.
Cleveland Cliffs says it will take five years to build the facility, so residents of Middletown will still be dealing with excessive pollution from the facility for some time. Sierra Club Miami Group has been pressing for pollution reduction in Middletown since 2000 and the restoration of the Air Nuisance Rule will help over the next five years with this facility in the interim.
In the early 2000s we were successful in reducing hundreds of tons of pollution. We restarted this effort in 2017 as we saw emissions and negative community impacts had increased. Since then our efforts have been thwarted by the failure of the local air agency to investigate and cite the company for pollution violations, sweetheart deals between the company (previously AK Steel) and the State of Ohio, which did nothing to reduce pollution. Subsequently the elimination of the federally enforceable Air Nuisance Rule hampered our ability to enforce the Clean Air Act. We’ll be continuing our work to ensure the deployment of green steel, including using renewable energy to produce hydrogen,
We also don’t know if Sun Coke Energy will shut down the coke oven facility where Cliffs has been getting coke or if Sun Coke will be selling coke to other companies.
Car manufacturers Ford and GM have committed to purchase near-zero emission steel. Such commitments from other manufactures will help grow the clean steel industry.
Additionally, international agreements on using green steel called carbon border adjustment mechanisms are being sought by the US and EU. Carbon border adjustments put a price on carbon for goods crossing international borders, leveling the playing field between companies with near zero emissions of carbon and those not reducing carbon.
You might also want to check out the OCED, Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations in the Department of Energy: https://www.energy.gov/oced/office-clean-energy-demonstrations.
Major changes are happening besides steel. Production of aluminum and other metals, cement and concrete, chemicals and more are part of the $6.3 billion dollar announcement by the Biden administration. “Together, the projects are expected to reduce 14 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year,” according to OCED.
