Why delayed maintenance at a northwest Indiana steel plant gives green steel advocates hope

Advocates for greener steelmaking hope maintenance delays at a northwest Indiana plant will lead to less polluting practices there. Cleveland Cliffs announced it plans to put off relining its blast furnace at its Burns Harbor facility until 2027.

Blast furnaces use coking coal to convert iron ore into molten metal. The process produces a lot of air pollution and uses a lot of energy. Because they get so hot, the bricks that line the towering furnaces need to be replaced every 15 to 20 years. This can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hilary Lewis is with Industrious Labs, a nonprofit that aims to decarbonize heavy industry. She said once Cleveland Cliffs makes this expensive investment, it will want to keep burning coking coal at its Burns Harbor plant for decades.

"But if they delay that decision, that gives them more time to evaluate cleaner alternatives and so that's what we're going to continue to push for," Lewis said.

This is the second time the Burns Harbor blast furnace reline has been delayed in recent years. The original relining was set for 2025, but was pushed back to 2026.

At least right now, it seems unlikely Cleveland Cliffs will change its plans.
 

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In a first quarter earnings call earlier this month, the company's president and CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, said Cleveland Cliffs would continue to rely on blast furnaces.

"Blast furnaces are necessary. Blast furnaces are here to stay," he said.

But the company is pursuing greener steelmaking at its plant in Middletown, Ohio — which would run on hydrogen and use something called direct reduced iron instead of coke.

The fate of that project is uncertain, however. The Middletown plant received a $500 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Industrial Demonstrations Program, which may be cut by the Trump administration.

A quarter of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions in Indiana come from its metal manufacturers. They also top the list for most toxic releases from industrial facilities in the state.

Rebecca is our energy and environment reporter. Contact her at rthiele@iu.edu or follow her on Twitter at @beckythiele.