In an interview with POLITICO, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said the Ohio-based company produces the steel with the lowest carbon emissions in the world. But he said his company cannot persuade buyers, mostly in the automobile sector, to pay the price to cover the costs of producing more environmentally friendly steel.
Dang. This looks like a problem.
Bit more context in case people pass on the article, but Cleveland Cliffs was looking to get a $500 million grant from the Department of Energy to convert a coal powered steel manufacturing facility to hydrogen. Automakers buy their steel on the global market, so prices need to be competitive with what India and China can come up with. That grant might expire, revealing a weak link in the White House’s green initiatives I hadn’t thought about before.
All of these companies are publicly traded, none of them are willing to absorb costs for transition projects. Lourenco Goncalves isn’t a good guy here.