A Coal-burning Steel Plant May Thwart Cleveland’s Climate Goals
Meanwhile, Cliffs’ Cleveland Works continues to spew emissions that drive climate change and harm human health.
SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Cleveland has big ambitions to reduce its planet-warming emissions. But a massive steelmaking facility run by Cleveland-Cliffs, one of Ohio’s major employers, could make it difficult for the city to see those plans through.
The plant emits roughly 4.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, complicating Cleveland’s effort to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, according to a report released by advocacy group Industrious Labs this summer. The plant is the city’s largest single source of planet-warming pollution.
Cleveland’s climate action plan is “bold and achievable,” said Hilary Lewis, steel director for Industrious Labs. But “if they want to achieve those goals, they have to take action on this Cleveland Works facility.”
As a major investment decision looms over an aging blast furnace at the facility, it’s unclear whether the company will move to cut its direct greenhouse gas emissions — or opt to reinvest in its existing coal-dependent processes.
Cliffs’ progress in reducing its nationwide emissions earned it recognition as a 2023 Goal Achiever in the Department of Energy’s Better Climate Challenge. As this year began, the company was set to slash emissions even further through projects supported by Biden-era legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 infrastructure law.
Then the Trump administration commenced its monthslong campaign of reneging on funding commitments for clean energy projects, including ones meant to ramp up the production of “green” hydrogen made with renewable energy. In June, Cliffs’ CEO Lourenco Goncalves backed away from a federally funded project to convert its Middletown Works in southwestern Ohio to produce green steel, saying there wouldn’t be a sufficient supply of hydrogen for the plant.
To Lewis, coauthor of the Industrious Labs report, that’s a weak excuse, because hydrogen production by other companies would have ramped up to supply the facility. “[Cliffs was] going to need so much hydrogen that they would be creating the demand,” she said.
Meanwhile, Cliffs’ Cleveland Works continues to spew emissions that drive climate change and harm human health. Industrious Labs’ modeling estimates that pollution from Cleveland Works is responsible for up to 39 early deaths per year, more than 1,700 lost work days, and more than 9,000 asthma cases. Cleveland ranks as the country’s fifth-worst city for people with asthma, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Courtesy: www.canarymedia.com