The Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill reportedly abandoned its hydrogen-based so-called green steel project in Middletown earlier this month.
This move comes after more than 30 House Republicans called to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act in May, which funds the Department of Energy鈥檚 $500 million dollar grant to modernize the facility.
Middletown鈥檚 representative, Warren Davidson, was one of the Republicans who called for the repeal.
Under the Biden administration, we had the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided $6 billion to invest in cleaning up heavy industry in the United States. This $6 million was awarded competitively to a number of different industries, and one of the industries was the iron and steel industry, said Hilary Lewis, the steel director with Industrious Labs, an environmental organization working to decarbonize heavy industry.
One the companies that was selected for award negotiation is Cleveland Cliffs.
The CEO of Cleveland Cliffs also told that a lack of hydrogen infrastructure was the primary reason for abandoning the project and that rising tariffs on steel imports forced his company to prioritize short-term profitability.
The project would have involved replacing coal-reliant blast furnaces with hydrogen-ready direct-reduced iron plants and electric melting furnaces.
So the proposition that Cleveland Cliffs put forward was that you would switch from a furnace that used coal to one that could use clean, hydrogen-made, with 100 percent renewable energy, which would nearly eliminate all of the fossil fuels. And with it, dramatically reduce health-harming pollution, Lewis said.
The DOE's Hydrogen Hub Program, which is where the grant comes from and aims to establish six regional Hydrogen networks by 2030, has faced delays in permitting and funding disbursement as well.
The planned switch from a coal-based steel plant to hydrogen was expected to create 1,200 union construction jobs and protect 2,500 existing positions.
To remain globally competitive is super important to keep this facility operating, to keep the local jobs, and to keep Ohio competitive globally as a steel producer, Lewis said.
The project was also projected to achieve cost savings for the plant of $450 million annually through efficiency gains and it improved the pollution outlook for the Middletown community surrounding the mill.
This is a huge problem because it means that the initial conception of this grant to help clean up local health harming pollution, to reduce climate emissions, is falling farther and farther out of sight, Lewis said.
According to a recent from industrious labs, the plant鈥檚 coke supplier contributes to anywhere from 45 to 82 premature deaths and more than $2 billion dollars in health-related costs across Ohio each year. Coke comes from coal and is a fuel and reducing agent used to produce iron ore in blast furnaces.
Lewis said those health-related costs from the plant鈥檚 coke supplier include over 7,000 cases of asthma symptoms and multiple ER visits annually.
鈥淏ut when you look at a clean hydrogen-based facility, many of these pollutants are nearly eliminated or dramatically reduced, she said.
In addition to health and environmental implications, Lewis said the global market is pushing for cleaner steel production.
While I will say that in the US, some of the major companies are lagging and could be making bigger commitments, they are international companies that are facing new regulations in places like Europe and are really seriously considering how they're going to address this issue in the future, she said. And so the facilities that are ready to produce a clean product are going to be the facilities that win out in the future.
Lewis said other countries in the European Union are also looking to put tariffs on materials made in a way that is carbon invasive.
So if we want to be a global leader, we wanna serve our own markets, but we also should be thinking about global markets, she said, And a dirty steel product is not going to be globally competitive.
House Rep. Davidson, Cleveland-Cliffs, and its union did not respond to WYSO鈥檚 requests to comment.
Lewis said she hopes the hydrogen project will be reinstated to reduce pollution in the community that relies on the plant for jobs and economic improvement.
We know negotiations are ongoing, but we don't know exactly what's on the table. And that's what's really concerning, she said.
In the interview with Steel Industry News, the company said it is pursuing alternative pathways, including blast furnace modernization with an AI-driven optimization system.