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POLLUTION: Colorado lawmakers introduce legislation that would tighten new greenhouse gas emissions rules for large industrial sites and expand the state’s air quality regulatory board. (CPR)
ALSO: Utah lawmakers introduce legislation aimed at making it easier for the state to flout federal pollution regulations. (Salt Lake Tribune, subscription)
CLEAN ENERGY:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES: A Colorado electric cooperative predicts it will obtain 90% of its power from renewable sources by 2025. (Vail Daily)
OIL & GAS:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Oregon lawmakers advance a bill that would ban people under 16 years old from riding electric bicycles. (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
BATTERIES: The first phase of a $1 billion lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility under construction in Arizona is expected to employ about 1,250 people when it is completed later this year. (Arizona Republic)
CLIMATE: Montana advocates, residents and businesses urge regulators to consider the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change in gas and electric utility regulation. (Daily Montanan)
GEOTHERMAL: Energy startup Fervo secures $244 million in financing to support its 400 MW enhanced geothermal facility under construction in western Utah. (news release)
COMMENTARY:
CARBON CAPTURE: A Bill Gates-backed startup plans to begin production at what it says will be the world’s largest carbon removal plant this week, where it will collect woody biomass from area paper mills and convert it into bricks to be stored underground. (E&E News)
ALSO: West Virginia lawmakers advance a bill to shift control of the permitting of carbon capture wells from the U.S. EPA to the state. (WV News)
SOLAR:
OIL & GAS:
EMISSIONS: A judge denies a motion by Virginia’s attorney general to throw out a lawsuit by an energy conservation group that seeks to block the state’s withdrawal from a regional carbon market. (Roanoke Times)
OVERSIGHT: Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry appoints a new leader for the state agency that oversees coastal restoration and hurricane protection, while also considering whether to merge that agency with the energy and natural resources department to make it easier for oil and gas companies to operate. (Louisiana Illuminator, NOLA.com)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
PIPELINES: A federal judge blocks a company’s attempt to condemn and transfer property for a Texas pipeline before talking to landowners it’s so far been unable to reach. (Texas Public Radio)
GRID:
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: The U.S. EPA holds listening sessions to “ground-truth” its efforts in Richmond, Virginia, and other environmentally stressed communities as President Biden nears the end of his first term. (Inside Climate News)
EFFICIENCY: North Carolina officials confirm the state applied for federal efficiency and appliance rebates, which should be available to residents later this year. (Winston-Salem Journal)
COMMENTARY: News that Alabama Power is entering negotiations with the U.S. EPA to remove and recycle tons of coal ash could be good news for 300 square miles of “America’s Amazon” downstream from a coal-fired power plant, writes an opinion contributor. (New York Times)
OIL & GAS: The federal Bureau of Land Management abandons work on a resource management plan ten years in the making that would guide oil and gas development in northwestern New Mexico’s Chaco region, baffling conservationists and the industry alike. (Capital & Main)
ALSO:
MINING:
UTILITIES: An Oregon county joins winemakers’ lawsuit against Pacific Power for its alleged role in sparking the 2020 Labor Day wildfires. (KOIN)
ELECTRIFICATION: Colorado residents accuse Xcel Energy of hampering efforts to electrify their homes and disconnect from natural gas service. (Daily Camera)
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Oregon receives $1.27 million in federal funding to develop electric vehicle charging infrastructure in underserved communities. (KPIC 4)
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: Republican Utah lawmakers establish an “environmental stewardship” caucus that emphasizes the importance of fossil fuels. (Deseret News)
POLICY: A majority of Maryland voters want the state to be tougher on oil and gas companies by making them pay for climate-related infrastructure upgrades, a new poll finds. (Maryland Matters)
ALSO: New Hampshire’s lack of resources for local, county and state officials to put together successful grant applications may be why it recently missed out on funds for electric vehicle charging infrastructure. (NHPR)
GRID: Federal energy regulators approve new reforms proposed by PJM Interconnection to improve reliability by changing the grid operator’s resource adequacy risk modeling and capacity accreditation processes. (Utility Dive)
GAS:
OFFSHORE WIND: Federal ocean energy officials kick off a public comment period for the draft environmental assessment of the Beacon Wind project. (North American Wind Power)
FLOODS: Some New Jersey towns along the Passaic River experience frequent flooding, but climate resiliency projects that could alleviate the issue come with large price tags. (Gothamist)
BUILDINGS: A Massachusetts historical society’s museum receives net-zero certification after installing a solar array. (Berkshire Eagle)
CLIMATE:
AFFORDABILITY: Maine lawmakers may extend a soon-to-expire electric bill assistance program that helps low-income ratepayers make timely payments in exchange for bill forgiveness. (Portland Press Herald)
OIL & GAS: Climate advocates say planned export liquefied natural gas export terminals could negate the Biden administration’s promised efforts to crack down on methane emissions. (Canary Media)
ALSO:
CLIMATE: The Biden administration touts $1 trillion in climate achievements over the last three years — a number with unclear sourcing that far exceeds the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act. (E&E News)
GEOTHERMAL: Colleges across the northern U.S. are building geothermal systems equipped with ground-source heat pumps to heat and cool buildings without emissions. (New York Times)
ELECTRIFICATION: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to introduce an ordinance this week that would ban natural gas hookups in new buildings and homes, a climate strategy facing pushback from a powerful local union. (Sun-Times)
MINING: An Arkansas town that was once dotted with oil wells sees familiarity in Exxon Mobil and other companies’ plans to explore lithium production in the area. (Grist)
GRID:
PIPELINES: A forthcoming U.S. Justice Department brief will show the Biden administration’s view on how a 1977 energy treaty with Canada affects efforts to shut down the Line 5 pipeline in Michigan. (Canadian Press)
EFFICIENCY:
SOLAR: Solar installations for houses of worship became more appealing under the federal Inflation Reduction Act, which allows them to directly claim tax credits. (Interlochen Public Radio)
POLICY: Connecticut lawmakers were unable to pass most of the provisions outlined in major climate bills in 2023, despite extreme weather and regional policy progress. (CT Mirror)
OIL & GAS: The U.S. Energy Department approves a $189 million loan to build a real-time laser monitoring network to track methane emissions from oil and gas facilities in Colorado, New Mexico and other states. (Reuters)
ALSO: New Mexico regulators agree to plug and reclaim a Texas company’s 300 idle oil and gas wells and allow the operator to reimburse the state over the next several decades. (KOAT 7)
NATURAL GAS: New Mexico regulators begin hearings on a controversial proposed natural gas storage facility in Rio Rancho. (Santa Fe New Mexican)
NUCLEAR:
CLIMATE:
SOLAR:
TRANSPORTATION: A proposal to establish a half-cent sales tax to fund road repairs, carpool lanes and expanded public transit in San Diego County qualifies for the Nov. 5 ballot. (San Diego Union-Tribune)
CARBON CAPTURE: A California county proposes charging companies a per-acre fee for sequestering captured carbon. (Bakersfield Californian)
COMMENTARY:
The following story is the first in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota.
World leaders in Dubai this week are concluding the latest United Nations conference on climate change, where experts and advocates repeated urgent pleas for governments to phase out fossil fuels and transition to clean energy.
In Minnesota, that change is underway. A new state law requires power companies to only sell clean electricity by 2040. Electric vehicle sales are growing, and energy efficient heat pumps are starting to replace gas furnaces — even in northern Minnesota.
But one of the biggest challenges for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota will be finding clean energy solutions for one of the state’s biggest industries: taconite mining. The state’s Iron Range supplies three-quarters of the raw material used to make domestic steel. Getting it out of the ground requires massive, diesel-powered trucks and other heavy-duty equipment for which less-polluting options aren’t yet widely available.
The steelmaking industry is facing pressure from customers and governments to reduce its climate impact, and Minnesota mine operators Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel are both exploring new fuels and technologies to help them meet sustainability goals.
According to the companies’ public statements to shareholders, the path forward is likely to include investments in new, more efficient vehicles and equipment, along with a switch to powering them with renewable electricity, biogas, or hydrogen instead of coal or gas.
U.S. Steel announced in April 2021 a goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Cleveland-Cliffs says it’s already exceeded its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2030.
The transition to clean energy could create new economic opportunities for the Iron Range, experts say, including the possibility to process iron ore on-site into a cleaner, premium product.
A recent event hosted by the city of Duluth and the National Renewable Energy Lab called industrial decarbonization the “billion-dollar question for the Northland.” Rolf Weberg, leader of the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Natural Resources Research Institute, says industrial operations have a real interest in reducing their carbon footprints.
“When you look globally between steel and concrete, that accounts for between 16-18% of carbon dioxide emissions globally,” Weberg explained. “Countries and industries are really trying to reduce their carbon footprint because we’re not meeting carbon goals across the globe.”
Weberg said NREL is interested in Minnesota because of its resources. Hydrogen, for example, is a clean-burning fuel that can be produced with no emissions using water and renewable energy – both relatively plentiful in Minnesota.
“(This includes) infrastructure for future energy, access to water — all of the things you need to have a hydrogen-based approach to preparing green iron and steel,” he said.
Aaron Brown, a Hibbing native and columnist who has written extensively about the region’s culture and economy, says the Iron Range is in a unique position to capitalize on new technologies and production methods designed to eliminate climate emissions. For example, one strategy steelmakers are exploring involves processing higher-grade iron pellets in electric arc furnaces, which is less geographically constrained by access to coal.
“What the new technology might do is create opportunities for entrepreneurs, and existing companies like Cleveland-Cliffs or U.S. Steel, to produce (steel) in Minnesota,” Brown said in a phone interview. “Now, whether that will happen or not, of course, is subject to speculation, but it is an opportunity to open up modern industry near the mouth of iron mines. And that should be very interesting to people in northern Minnesota.”
Minnesota’s Iron Range has experienced monumental shifts since settlers found iron-rich deposits there in the late 19th century. The giants of American industry — James J. Hill, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller — collectively created U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar company, with iron ore largely mined from the Iron Range.
Taconite is a hard, dense rock containing a mixture of silicates and magnetite. After it’s mined in vast open pits, it is crushed into a fine powder, with the magnetite extracted to eventually create marble-sized pellets that contain over 65% iron.
Mining efforts in the Mesabi Iron Range have focused on taconite ore, a lower-grade iron ore processed from vast pits, since the 1950s. Taconite mining transformed the region after underground mining depleted the high-grade hematite deposits. Forty million tons of iron ore are mined there each year.
That ore from Minnesota is shipped across the Great Lakes to plants from Chicago to Pittsburgh, where it is combined with coke, a product derived from coal that is shipped by rail from Appalachia to make steel.
But what if coal were taken out of this equation? New shifts in technology are moving toward using specially formulated iron briquettes in electric arc furnaces instead of lower-grade iron materials in coal-powered blast furnaces. And Iron Range taconite plant owners Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel are both increasing production of a new type of iron pellet that does not require coal-powered blast furnaces to process into steel. Electricity can be used instead, meaning a rail connection to coal mines may no longer be necessary for processing the raw material into steel.
These direct reduced-grade pellets are a metallic iron product instead of an iron oxide product like taconite. And they require less energy to process. The company did not respond to interview requests, but its website lists the environmental benefits of these pellets.
“If we converted United Taconite’s full standard pellet production … net greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by approximately 370,000 tons per year,” Cleveland-Cliffs states.
U.S. Steel announced in 2022 plans to break ground on a new $150 million direct reduced iron production facility near Keewatin on the Range. In November 2022, the company announced Keetac was the selected site for the expanded operation. Keetac currently employs about 400 people.
“Keetac’s high quality ore body and long mine life makes it the best choice for DR-grade pellet capabilities. We will have the ability to produce both blast furnace and DR-grade pellets at Keetac in the future. These actions will allow us to become increasingly self-sufficient to feed our mini mills segment with key metallics.”
Weberg defines “green” iron and steel as having no fossil fuels involved at any point in its production.
“Our iron industry in Minnesota has been working toward this for some time,” Weberg said. “Our colleagues at Cleveland-Cliffs and at U.S. Steel have been making significant progress with direct reduced grade pellets.”
Brown speculated about a possible future with steel created using hydrogen power and what that could mean for the Iron Range.
“What hydrogen steel might do for Minnesota is create the opportunity … for efficient and profitable steel production near where the mining occurs — an opportunity that doesn’t exist now because the cost of getting the coke and coal … to Minnesota is prohibitive,” Brown said.
As in decades before, the ebbs and flows of the global steel market will continue to impact the Iron Range. As policymakers and manufacturers look toward a sustainable future, the Iron Range may be well poised to prosper in a new, green economy built on the industrious foundation of its core: mining.
The following story is the second in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota.
Minnesota taconite mine operator Cleveland-Cliffs is testing a new method for treating industrial wastewater in hopes of decreasing water, chemical and energy use — as well as costs.
The project is among several efforts by the company to lower its energy use as steelmakers face growing pressure from governments, investors, and customers to reduce the climate impact of their operations.
Energy efficiency is often the quickest and most cost-effective way for companies to cut their carbon footprint. When it comes to mining, the opportunity is as large as the massive trucks and other heavy-duty equipment used to haul and process taconite.
Cleveland-Cliffs was recently recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy for cutting companywide energy use by nearly one-third since 2017. The federal agency’s office of industrial efficiency and decarbonization is monitoring the water treatment project, as well.
“Bringing these emerging technologies out of the laboratory and onto the factory floor is a critical part of reaching our industrial decarbonization goals,” said Avi Schultz, director of the Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.
Decarbonization refers to the process of lowering or eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that causes climate change. The steel industry is among the three biggest sources of carbon emissions on the planet, accounting for around 8% of all global carbon emissions. Most steelmakers, including those that own and operate the Iron Range’s taconite mines, have adopted internal goals for reducing emissions.
“One of the most important issues impacting our industry, our stakeholders and our planet is climate change,” Cleveland-Cliffs told its investors this year. “We plan to achieve our GHG emissions reduction goal by focusing on actionable, commercially viable technologies and solutions while supporting research for breakthrough technologies for the primary iron and steel sector.”
It cited its partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy to implement and test energy-saving technology as a key piece of its climate strategy.
Cleveland-Cliffs operates Hibbing Taconite, United Taconite, Northshore Mining and the Minorca Mine on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The company is working with Arizona-based Dynamic Water Technologies on two pilot projects to reduce lost water and energy waste from treating wastewater.
The technologies are first being tested in a Cleveland, Ohio, plant.
Michael Boyko is the co-founder and director of business development for Dynamic Water Technologies. He said the equipment being studied is fundamentally better at what it does.
“These technologies are justified because they do it better, faster, and more cost effectively,” Boyko said. “If they were just an environmental benefit with no water, sewer, or chemical savings, it would be a harder sell to industrial clients.”
The project is piloting two different technologies for oil and hydrocarbon removal. One is called electrocoagulation, and the other is electrochemical water treatment.
Electrocoagulation is done by applying direct-current electricity to iron plates, which creates a coagulant that bonds with contaminants in the water and makes them much larger. These enlarged particles then either float to the top or sink to the bottom, making them easier to remove.
Boyko said this process eliminates the need for several chemical processes and various agitators, mixers and pumps along the way, making it more cost-effective and faster.
“There’s definitely a lot of energy savings, because we’re doing in one process what seven different chemical water treatment systems basically were doing,” he said.
Electrochemical water treatment, meanwhile, replaces chemical treatment of processed water within cooling towers using dynamic scale reactor technology. This technology quickens the natural process of scale buildup from minerals within reactor chambers, sequestering it for later removal. The process allows the same water to cycle through the system eight or more times, instead of as few as three.
Cleveland-Cliffs did not respond to interview requests, but the company touted the technology’s environmental benefits in its most recent sustainability report.
“The alternative technology yielded significant reduction in solid waste from process water, and preliminary data shows it could also increase process water reuse,” the report said.
This technology is already in use at Los Angeles City Hall and the Juliette Gordon Low Federal Building in Savannah, Georgia, with federal government testing validating the positive effects.
Cleveland-Cliffs also participates in the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings program. The voluntary program encourages improved energy performance across industrial operations, which account for more than one-third of total U.S. end-use energy consumption.
“This is essential for the industrial sector, as inattention to greenhouse gas emissions, inefficient energy and water use, and excessive waste production can hurt domestic competitiveness in a global marketplace,” the department says.
A detailed report of the Cleveland-Cliffs project is expected to be issued by the end of the year.
The following story is the fourth in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota.
A Hoyt Lakes native leading a regional hydrogen partnership says the emerging fuel source could someday help make Minnesota’s Iron Range a leader in the production of green steel.
“Yes, certainly it has great potential,” said Tom Erickson, president and chief operating officer of the Heartland Hydrogen Hub, one of seven regional projects recently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to kickstart hydrogen fuel production. “The first obvious use of hydrogen within the taconite (mining) industry is just to produce electricity.”
The federal government is investing billions to develop regional hydrogen production hubs, intended to spur the infrastructure needed to increase the supply and lower the cost enough to make it commercially viable.
Hydrogen emits only water vapor and warm air when burned, but it’s typically produced from natural gas in a process that creates high greenhouse gas emissions. The Heartland Hydrogen Hub will use renewable energy and nuclear power to try to reduce the climate impact, as well as the price tag.
The initial focus will be on supplying hydrogen for ammonia fertilizer, but Erickson said the same output could also replace more carbon-intensive fuels used to heat and power taconite mining operations on the Iron Range.
“That industry uses a lot of natural gas for heat and thermal systems, for producing the pellets,” Erickson said. “You’d have to design (the systems) quite a bit differently, but you could certainly add some hydrogen power to that and decrease the emissions from that standpoint.”
The most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen has historically been difficult to harness into energy. The Hindenburg Disaster of 1937 is an infamous example that demonstrates hydrogen’s explosive qualities.
“You can’t mine it. You can’t stick a pipe in the ground, then bring hydrogen up. You have to produce it from something else. It’s the smallest molecule, the hardest one to trap,” Erickson explained. “It’s the hardest one to move around once you’ve produced it, so we have some things that we need to get over and get behind coming up with new innovative ideas to really bring the costs down.”
Most commercial hydrogen is produced today by separating the hydrogen atoms from methane under high heat and pressure, with many industrial facilities using natural gas as the methane source. This method produces hydrogen, carbon monoxide and a relatively small amount of carbon dioxide.
Electrolysis splits hydrogen from water using an electric current. This method does not create any byproducts or emissions other than oxygen and hydrogen. It is the primary focus of the Department of Energy’s investment into hydrogen energy.
The Heartland Hydrogen Hub’s projects are expected to reduce carbon emissions by roughly 1 million metric tons per year, the equivalent of 220,000 gasoline-powered cars.
Erickson — who is also the director of exploratory research at University of North Dakota — said infrastructure for hydrogen’s use on a wider scale is in the future.
“Shipping — whether it’s trains or whether it’s ships moving large quantities of oil around — they are even bigger targets,” he said. “Maybe even a little bit easier targets for application of the hydrogen fuel.”
Erickson, whose grandfather and numerous other relatives worked in the taconite mines on the Iron Range, said technology to produce higher quality taconite pellets has been studied in Keewatin, where U.S. Steel plans to invest $150 million in a new higher-grade taconite plant.
“Folks on the Range have looked at (higher grade taconite pellets) produced from natural gas, from coal derived gases and of course from hydrogen,” Erickson said.
The Heartland Hydrogen Hub is currently in the concept development phase, and Erickson said he is excited for the advancing technology in energy for the future.
“What I’m most excited about is to start to see larger scale production of hydrogen,” he said. “Once we start producing it, we can start to find other ways to utilize the things that advantages society, different ways that we can manipulate the molecule …. to provide clean, reliable and sustainable energy.”
Steel is made using a lot of heat, and coal-powered blast furnaces are still used for 57% of global steelmaking capacity. That’s a decrease from the year before, when 67% of the world’s steel capacity was made using blast furnaces — marking a shift toward electric arc furnace technology worldwide.
The Iron Range supplies three-fourths of the country’s iron ore, from which steel is made. Steelmakers such as U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs, which own the mining operations on the Iron Range, are seeing growing pressure from governments, investors, and customers to reduce their climate emissions. It’s not just the potential for future environmental regulations. More companies are willing to pay a premium for steel that comes with a smaller carbon footprint.
Cutting emissions from mining and other heavy industry is expected to be a bigger challenge than cleaning up cars or power plants. That’s because of the need to power massive furnaces and other equipment for which electric alternatives aren’t widely available.
These factors are leading many manufacturers to be interested in the potential of hydrogen fuel. Cleveland-Cliffs, which owns and operates Hibbing Taconite, has already committed to funding a hydrogen power project at its Toledo plant. Without any modification to the plant, the company says it could replace up to 30% of natural gas consumption with hydrogen. And with equipment upgrades and other investments, this number could rise to 70%, accounting for 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.
Cleveland-Cliffs is also part of a federally funded hydrogen hub based in northern Indiana. In October, the company was recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy for cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by more than one-third.
The company didn’t respond to requests for comment on what its emission-cutting efforts might mean for northern Minnesota, but researcher Rolf Weberg said the state’s mining industry is well-positioned to make use of hydrogen fuel.
“It turns out that Minnesota is by far highly competitive for making green iron and steel, beyond other states in the country,” said Weberg, the executive director of University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Natural Resource Research Institute. “We have essentially all of the resources, including infrastructure for future energy and access to water. All the things you need to have for a hydrogen-based approach to preparing green iron and steel.”
With the future of hydrogen energy, Weberg said conversations with stakeholders are only just beginning.
“Minnesota industry has been investing to prepare for this,” Weberg said. “It’s an exciting opportunity for Minnesota to embrace, and the conversation is just started. This is an opportunity to really lead the charge in this area, and also do it in tandem with green hydrogen and green steel.”
Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs’ success in beating its goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions from its U.S. iron and steel operations won recognition from the Department of Energy last month.
The progress is part of a broader industry trend to cut pollution that drives human-caused climate change. Yet advocates say there’s lots of room for further cuts.
Cliffs slashed greenhouse gas emissions for almost four dozen U.S. facilities by nearly one-third from a 2017 baseline as of the end of last year. As a result, the Department of Energy named the company a 2023 Goal Achiever in the agency’s Better Climate Challenge.
The steel industry was responsible for about 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions as of 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported last year. That’s roughly one-sixth of all worldwide emissions from generating power, according to a Canary Media analysis of the International Energy Agency data. The iron and steel industry led the industrial sector, with the cement industry coming in second.
The achievement and ongoing decarbonization efforts by Cliffs and other companies stand out because the steel industry has been seen as a hard-to-decarbonize sector, due to its need for high heat and continuous operations, as well as process reactions that emit more carbon dioxide.
At the same time, the energy transition and growth of renewable energy will likely increase demand for steel, and global demand for low-carbon steel should grow as well, according to a McKinsey & Company analysis released earlier this year. Companies in the steel industry also see a need to curb emissions in order to limit the worst impacts of climate change.
“We do know that we play a role in global warming,” said Traci Forrester, executive vice president for environmental and sustainability matters at Cliffs.
Added incentives come from the prospect of possible government regulation of carbon emissions in order to address climate change, as noted in the company’s 2022 annual report to shareholders, released this past April.
Customer demands also play a role. “At U.S. Steel, it’s not just about reducing our own carbon footprint,” said Arista Joyner, who manages financial and sustainability communications for that company. “We must adapt to the changing needs of our customers and their sustainability goals too.”
The traditional method of making steel mixes iron ore in a blast furnace with a high-carbon form of coal, called coke. The carbon combines with oxygen in the ore to form carbon dioxide. The iron melts. Other leftover waste takes the form of slag.
The iron — called “pig iron” at this stage — is then sent to a second furnace that blows in oxygen to make steel from the iron and some other elements. That also releases greenhouse gas emissions.
Together, the two steps account for nearly three-fourths of the U.S. iron and steel industry’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to RMI, a nonprofit whose work focuses on decarbonization.
Much of Cliffs’ progress on emissions is thanks to the 2020 opening of its “direct reduction” plant in Toledo. The facility starts with pelletized iron ore, which comes primarily from Minnesota, where a preliminary baking process has already removed some impurities.
Direct reduction removes oxygen from the ore with reformed methane, which is basically a combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Both the hydrogen atoms and the carbon monoxide molecules can combine chemically with the oxygen. So, direct reduction is a lower-carbon way to process the ore pellets. The plant’s output is hot briquetted iron.
The Toledo plant has not eliminated the company’s use of blast furnaces. But hot briquetted iron can reduce the amount of coke needed if its next stop is a blast furnace, Forrester said. Transporting the briquettes while they’re hot also cuts down on fuel needs there or for the oxygen process furnace.
Hot briquetted iron can also go into an electric arc furnace. The steel industry mainly uses those furnaces now to recycle scrap steel.
“The beauty of steel is that it’s infinitely recyclable,” said Rich Freuhauf. The senior vice president and chief strategy and sustainability officer for U.S. Steel spoke at a Reuters Industry Transition conference in September.
Recycling eliminates the need to repeat the carbon dioxide-releasing steps of refining iron ore. And, as the name implies, electric arc furnaces run on electricity. So they could use nuclear power or renewable energy with battery storage instead of fossil fuels.
But recycled steel from electric arc furnaces won’t necessarily satisfy all the forecast demands for steel. Nor does it yet meet the requirements for some higher-grade or specialty types of steel. Those include higher-strength steel and high-ductility steel, which can be formed into different shapes, such as the exposed panels on automobiles.
“That’s really our niche in servicing the automotive market, in addition to many other markets,” Forrester said. Some carbon content can also help achieve different properties in steel.
Cliffs’ emissions cuts also reflect energy efficiency improvements throughout its facilities, Forrester said. And there’s room for more emissions reductions.
Cliffs is part of the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen. Assuming acceptable agreements can be negotiated with the agency, the coalition stands to get up to $1 billion in hydrogen hub funding, the Department of Energy announced last month.
The hub could help supply Cliffs’ Indiana Harbor and Burns Harbor plants. Hydrogen would likely be blended with natural gas at first, Forrester said. Then, if all goes well, hydrogen could substitute for more or potentially all of the fossil fuel.
Cliffs also was part of the Great Lakes Clean Hydrogen Hub Coalition, which proposed making so-called “pink hydrogen” with excess electricity at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Although DOE did not pick the project for a regional hydrogen hub award, the Energy Harbor plant has been working on hydrogen production for several years. Spokesperson Todd Morgano said the project “is scheduled to be operational by spring of 2024.”
The steel industry has also been buying more renewable energy. Last December, for example, Cliffs agreed to a 15-year power purchase agreement with EDP Renewables for 180 megawatts of power from a wind farm in Indiana near the Ohio border. State laws passed in 2014 and 2021 make it extremely difficult to site new commercial wind farms in Ohio.
Carbon capture utilization and storage, or CCUS, could also curb the steel industry’s emissions, although its feasibility hasn’t been proven yet.
“While carbon capture technologies exist and are widely adopted in the oil and gas realm and some other industries, carbon capture has never been done with blast furnace gas,” Forrester said. Cliffs has multiple facilities near areas with suitable geologic formations for storing the waste carbon dioxide, she noted.
Other research is exploring whether carbon might be further cut or eliminated from the ore-processing stages. In June, the Department of Energy announced nearly $32 million in funding for projects to decarbonize iron and steel.
One of the 10 projects that won funding, led by Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, would use an electric current with molten salt to strip oxygen from iron ore. Case Western is also among the partners for the Center for Steel Electrification by Electrosynthesis, headed by Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois.
“From our standpoint, Cleveland-Cliffs has been a good actor to date,” said Nick Yavorsky, an RMI industry analyst who co-authored a September report on opportunities for making near-zero-emissions steel in the Great Lakes region. But, he added, “now we have to look at the big stuff.”
While hydrogen could potentially power all of a direct reduction plant, there are limits on how much could be blended with coal at a blast furnace, he said. Further big cuts would likely call for retiring coal-burning blast furnaces and replacing them with more direct reduction plants. Yavorsky said he also thinks most specialty steel products could be made in electric arc furnaces run on renewables or nuclear power with hot briquetted iron.
Ohio policymakers could support investments to achieve those shifts, including through existing programs for JobsOhio, said Lachlan Carey, an RMI policy analyst and economist who also worked on the September report. Supporting green steel could increase the state’s steel industry employment, while also enhancing Ohio’s ability to attract other manufacturing jobs where companies want access to clean energy, he said.
U.S. Steel has already committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Freuhauf said. Cliffs has so far shied away from that.
“We take a very practical approach to reducing greenhouse gases and the statements and promises that we make,” Forrester said, adding that while the company has aspirations, it focuses on what it knows it can achieve. “We take action on what we can today,” she said.
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