Great Lakes Steelmaking at a Crossroads

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The steel mills in northwest Indiana make the metal that’s used to build the nation’s cars, skyscrapers, appliances and naval ships. For over a century, the hulking facilities have driven the region’s economy and employed many thousands of workers — while also spewing pollution and planet-warming gases from their coal-fueled furnaces.

Steel-town residents and environmental activists have long pushed to clean up Indiana’s mills, of which three remain along the shores of Lake Michigan. 

Now, the community sees a new opportunity to do this, thanks to the flood of foreign investment coming into America’s steel industry. That’s according to a trio of experts convened for a panel that I moderated at the 2026 Society of Environmental Journalists’ conference in Chicago.

Asian steelmakers looking to America

Last year, Japan’s Nippon Steel acquired Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel and pledged to spend $11 billion by 2028 to revamp and expand facilities nationwide, including Gary Works in Indiana. 

And Korean steelmaking giant POSCO is in talks to partner with America’s second-largest steel company, Cleveland-Cliffs, which owns Burns Harbor Works and Indiana Harbor Works. POSCO is also investing in the $6 billion steel plant that Korean automaker Hyundai is building in south Louisiana. 

The Trump administration’s high tariffs on steel imports are a key reason why the conglomerates are expanding their presence stateside. 

But they’re also looking to capitalize on America’s rising demand for high-value metal — steel that meets more exacting standards for vehicles and electrical equipment, and which represents a more attractive market than the commodity steel that’s flowing out of China. 

“The U.S. market is now becoming a proxy battle between three of Asia's largest steelmakers,” Roger Smith, a Japan-based expert at the nonprofit advocacy group SteelWatch, said during the panel. “This is unprecedented,” he added. “The future of the industry may well be decided in Seoul and Tokyo.”

An opportunity to transition from coal

Northwest Indiana’s steel mills certainly need the infusion of funding. 

The region’s industry has gradually dwindled over decades, due to rising overseas competition, increased automation and the growth of steel-recycling mills in other parts of the country. 

At its peak in the 1970s, some 65,000 people worked in the state’s mills. Today, it’s closer to 9,000 people, and the workforce is expected to keep shrinking without further investment, according to an April report by Indiana University.

U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs have both seen their revenues decline in recent years, and much of the companies’ coal-based capacity is in need of expensive repairs and upgrades. 

For activists like Jack Weinberg, the foreign funding represents a chance to rebuild the local industry using modern, lower-carbon methods.

Weinberg is a former steelworker and the green-steel lead for Gary Advocates for Responsible Development in Indiana. He said that transitioning away from coal is crucial not only for improving people’s health and addressing climate change — but also for ensuring Indiana’s steel industry can continue operating in a rapidly changing market. 

The steel industry’s blurring lines

Today, northwest Indiana is the country’s top producer of high-performance flat-rolled steel. 

The region’s “integrated” mills operate in two stages: first by heating iron ore in coal-fueled blast furnaces to make virgin iron, then processing the molten metal in a separate furnace to produce steel. This method is the main driver of carbon dioxide emissions across the global industry, which accounts for about 9% of total annual CO2 emissions.

By making virgin iron, the Gary, Burns Harbor and Indiana Harbor mills have long held an edge over America’s 150-plus mills that melt down recycled steel scrap in giant electric arc furnaces. 

While steel recycling is comparatively less carbon-intensive, those facilities’ products haven’t traditionally met the performance standards that the auto, military and certain other industries require.

Yet the long-standing lines between integrated and steel-recycling mills are starting to blur, in ways that don’t necessarily bode well for northwest Indiana, Weinberg said.

Consider, for example, U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel Works in Arkansas. The sprawling site includes four electric arc furnaces, which use a mix of scrap metal and virgin iron to produce high-strength, auto-grade steel. For now, that iron comes from the Gary Works plant in Indiana. But in late April, U.S. Steel said it was building a $1.9 billion plant to make iron on-site at Big River Steel, an investment made possible by its parent company, Nippon Steel.

The Arkansas facility will use natural gas to convert iron ore into iron pellets through the “direct reduction” process. Gas-fueled direct-reduction plants can emit about half the CO2 emissions of coal-based blast furnaces. 

However, companies could produce nearly zero-emission iron if they instead used green hydrogen — which is made with renewable electricity and water — though the concept has been slow to scale up globally.

In Louisiana, Hyundai’s steel mill will include a direct-reduction plant and electric arc furnace that will operate in a way similar to traditional integrated mills. The Korean manufacturer initially plans to use natural gas to make iron for its automotive steel, but has said it intends to eventually switch to green hydrogen.

Sights set on a green-steel future

Weinberg and other northwest Indiana residents hope that the Asian steelmakers will likewise invest in modernizing their region’s aging furnaces. Otherwise, the mills risk becoming uncompetitive and closing down by the 2040s, Gary Advocates for Responsible Development said in a January report. (U.S. Steel, for its part, criticized the group’s findings in statements to the Chicago Tribune; subscription required.)

“People put up with all the health problems associated with coal-based blast furnaces because they needed the steel and didn’t have any alternative,” Weinberg said. “How long is the country going to put up with this when a cleaner way is available to do the same thing?”

Lisa Vallee, who lives in Whiting near the Indiana Harbor steel mill, said that shifting to cleaner steel production would be “life-changing” for the region. 

Replacing coal-based blast furnaces would curb air and water pollution, while building renewable energy projects, producing green hydrogen and modernizing steel plants could deliver an economic boost, said Vallee, who is an organizing director for the grassroots group Just Transition Northwest Indiana.

“We have the [steel] facilities, we have a workforce, we have the lake — we have everything we need in northwestern Indiana to create green steel,” she said. “It’s just the investment we need to actually make it happen.”

Courtesy: www.sej.org