Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.’s plant in Toledo could become the first U.S. steelmaking operation of its kind to get the majority of its operating power from clean hydrogen.
Completed in 2020, the Toledo plant is one of only two of its kind. The other is in Texas.
One of the lesser-known advantages of the Toledo plant is that it was built to be “hydrogen ready.”
Hydrogen is often seen as a lofty dream for those trying to reduce climate-altering greenhouse gases.
The plant is currently powered by natural gas, a fossil fuel considered a significant improvement over the traditional combustion of dirty coal. But even natural gas produces emissions that alter Earth’s climate to some degree.
In both its 2022 annual report to shareholders and its sustainability report for that year, Cleveland-Cliffs said it has a goal of achieving a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions companywide by 2030 over 2017 levels.
Then, during the company’s 2023 first quarter earnings report on April 25, Lourenco Goncalves, Cleveland-Cliffs chairman, president, and CEO, said the Toledo plant could be powered by as much as 60 percent hydrogen someday if the company can get a pipeline built to send it to that plant. It is seeking money from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act to do that.
The company states in its 2022 sustainability report that the plant “was engineered to replace up to 30 percent of the natural gas with hydrogen without modifications.”
“So we are ready,” Mr. Goncalves said. “We just need the hydrogen. We are working with several — not one, but several — different groups to create hydrogen hubs that can bring a cheap and plentiful hydrogen to Toledo and also Cleveland because we actually have the technology of injecting natural gas into blast furnace.”
The foresight to build a hydrogen-ready plant could help a major application submitted by a consortium that includes the University of Toledo and others to produce hydrogen in this region for multiple users.
Linde, leading global industrial gases and engineering company with 2022 sales of $33 billion, is identified as the prime applicant of a proposal in which $2 billion has been requested from the U.S. Department of Energy, according to a news release.
Those writing letters of support include local unions, educational institutions, community organizations, economic development organizations, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown and Gary Peters, as well as U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green), and other members of Michigan and Ohio congressional delegations.
Cleveland-Cliffs joined the Great Lakes Clean Hydrogen group in 2022. The federal Energy Department is to select up to eight hubs and divide up the $8 billion the government has set aside for them to produce hydrogen on a regional basis. The money will come from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
UT, Energy Harbor, Cleveland-Cliffs, TARTA, First Solar, Linde, GE Aerospace, Michigan State and Michigan Tech universities, the Port of Monroe, PJM Interconnection, multiple glass manufacturers, the Glass Manufacturing Industry Council, and several national laboratories are on a long list of partners in that proposal.
Energy Harbor’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant has been identified as a site where hydrogen could be produced regionally. But there are a lot of unknowns, including what the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission finds from a special inspection that a five-member team of scientists began out there regarding ground-settling issues in late April.
The national goal of reducing the carbon footprint in the steel industry is important because steel manufacturing is so energy intensive, yet the goal of decarbonizing the transportation sector with more electric vehicles requires more steel production, too.
According to Industrious Labs, a group that promotes carbon reductions in the industrial sector, the automotive industry accounted for 30 percent of Cleveland-Cliffs’ sales and 22 percent of U.S. Steel’s sales in 2022. They are the two largest U.S. steel manufacturers, the group said.
“Put simply, due to our size as a supplier of automotive steel in the United States and also due to our unique technical capabilities, these goals of the U.S. government cannot be reached without Cleveland-Cliffs,” Mr. Goncalves said in his April 25 remarks.
He went on say that his company is “an integral part” of the national transition to electric vehicles “regardless of whether it happens at a fast or at a slow pace.”
Hillary Lewis, Industrious Labs steel director, told The Blade that her group is tracking what kind of hydrogen is used, too.
It is encouraging steelmakers to convert operations in a way that would allow them to use hydrogen that is produced entirely from renewable energy sources, also known as “green hydrogen.” It prefers to have hydrogen produced by wind power, solar power, and other renewable sources of energy, rather than from nuclear power.
“For us, it’s important that it’s green hydrogen and we get to 100 percent hydrogen,” she said. “We are definitely keeping a close eye on the DOE and what the hydrogen hub [program] does.”
Cleveland-Cliffs states on its website that its Toledo plant “is expected to generate significant value for the company going forward.”
It has been visited in recent months by both U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Cleveland-Cliffs also said in its 2022 sustainability report that it is the only American steel producer in the DOE’s Better Climate Challenge Initiative and is the largest industrial user in the DOE’s Better Plants program. Both promote cleaner and more energy-efficient operations.
According to information provided by Industrious Labs, the steel industry has more than 60 clean-steel projects in operation or under construction across Europe, including a $4.3 billion low-carbon steel plant in Finland that was announced in January.
Canada and Germany are tearing down old plants and replacing them with more modern facilities that will ultimately be operated with green hydrogen, the group said.
For now, though, hydrogen remains in short supply in the United States.
“The hydrogen project is [in the] future because we still don’t have hydrogen,” Mr. Goncalves said in his remarks.
First Published May 13, 2023, 2:00 p.m.
