MIDDLETOWN, OH — Cleveland-Cliffs and the Department of Energy announced plans to continue the use of coal at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown Works steel mill today, abandoning previously announced plans to transition toward clean energy. The company was originally selected in March 2024 for up to $500 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to replace Middletown's coal-fired blast furnace with a 2.5-million-tonne hydrogen-ready Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) plant and two electric melting furnaces.

"Almost every day my home and property, as well as my neighbors, are bombarded by fallout, noise, and toxic emissions. Cleveland-Cliffs and JD Vance need to get rid of coal and go back to the original project that would clean up the air we breathe and improve our health. Extending the life of the coal furnace will continue to harm me, my family and my neighbors,” said Donna Balinger, a Middletown resident who lives 800ft from the plant.

Announcing that award in 2024, Cleveland-Cliffs said the project would make Middletown "the most advanced, lowest GHG-emitting integrated iron and steel facility in the world,” securing 2,500 union jobs, adding 170 permanent positions, and creating 1,200 construction jobs, while cutting production costs by $150 per net ton of liquid steel, which the company valued at $450 million in annual savings.

“For decades people living near the steel mill have compromised their health and quality of life for the economic promises of the steel mill. The federal grant was supposed to create a new paradigm, where communities no longer had to trade health for jobs. The Vice President needs to step up and protect his hometown from this ongoing pollution by insisting Cleveland-Cliffs live up to their promise of clean steel, saving and creating jobs while protecting public health,” said Marilyn Wall, a volunteer with the Ohio Sierra Club.

The Department of Energy’s Industrial Demonstrations Program was established specifically to solicit "first- or early-of-a-kind" technologies capable of spearheading American industrial decarbonization. Selected from over 400 competitive applicants, Middletown Works was a centerpiece of that effort, the nation's first demonstration of a unionized, coal-based integrated mill modernizing to cleaner steelmaking.

Elena Saxonhouse, Managing Attorney with Sierra Club said, “Cleveland Cliffs is recklessly going back on its word when it promised, back in 2024, to reduce air pollution in the Middleton community by using federal investments in the newest cleanest steel making technology. Instead, Cleveland Cliffs is doubling down on pollution with older-generation, coal-based production. In allowing this about-face, DOE is redirecting half a billion taxpayer dollars away from Congress's intended purpose. Using this massive amount of money to reinvest in out-of-date production methods proven to cause harm to people and the environment is bad business and bad policy.”

The revised project abandons that vision. The company is currently seeking a permit to install what the new plan calls an “advanced” natural gas cogeneration plant, an otherwise standard efficiency technology that burns blast furnace gas to raise steam and generate electricity. Cleveland-Cliffs already operates this technology at its other blast furnace operations, Cleveland Works, Burns Harbor, Indiana Harbor, and Dearborn Works.

“Middletown Works was promised the opportunity to become a global leader in clean steelmaking. Instead, the plant is receiving huge federal incentives to save the company money without meaningfully reducing pollution. Ohio communities like Middletown helped build the American steelmaking industry, they deserve a leading role in its future. This new plan is not that,” said Hilary Lewis, Steel Director at Industrious Labs.

The original project proposal was projected to eliminate roughly one million metric tons of carbon emissions annually and drastically cut local smog and soot. Today, Middletown Works ranks among Ohio's top 10 industrial polluters for carbon monoxide, lead, fine particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide. Cleveland-Cliffs runs one other coal-based integrated mill in Ohio, Cleveland Works, which produces roughly a third more steel than Middletown while emitting less than half the nitrogen oxides and about a quarter of the sulfur dioxide. An analysis by Industrious Labs using EPA's COBRA model estimates that Middletown Works' current pollution contributes annually to 37 to 67 premature deaths, over 21,000 cases of asthma symptoms, 44 emergency room visits, and thousands of lost school and work days.

“Proud steelmaking communities across the Midwest have suffered decades of disinvestment as new, cleaner mills create jobs and economic opportunity primarily in the South. Modern steelmaking investments like what was previously promised in Middletown can reverse that trend, but backpedaling like we are seeing today does nothing for the long term competitiveness of the mill and the community it supports,” said Mike Oles, Midwest Director at Mighty Earth.