U.S. steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs is moving on from hydrogen.
Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves on Tuesday voiced his strongest doubts yet that U.S. hydrogen production will grow fast enough to support his company’s decarbonization plans. A $500 million Department of Energy grant under former President Joe Biden would have replaced a coal-based blast furnace in Ohio with a hydrogen-fueled plant.
“Without hydrogen, the entire thing falls apart,” Goncalves told reporters at an event hosted by the lobby group American Iron and Steel Institute. “At the very least, I will not have hydrogen at the time I need for that specific project.”
Goncalves signaled in May that his company, one of the largest American steel producers, would “substantially alter” and scale back plans to use hydrogen as a reductant at its coal-based steel plant in Middletown, Ohio. He vowed at the time to instead extend the life of a coal-using “blast furnace” at the plant, adding that Cleveland-Cliffs was renegotiating a retooled grant with the Trump administration.
