Atlanta, GA - U.S. Steel CEO Dave Burritt told an industry conference that the company plans to reline its biggest furnace, blast furnace #14 at Gary Works in Indiana in 2026. The company had previously indicated this plan as part of the Nippon Steel sale, estimating the cost at $300 million. Based on EPA data, Industrious Labs estimates that extending the life of this blast furnace by 20 years would result in 87 million tCO2e pollution, approximately equivalent to 23 coal-fired power plants operating for one year.

“Blast furnaces are an antiquated technology that discharge tons of pollutants into the air every year. Local residents pay the price with increased health problems and lower life expectancies. We urge Nippon to commit to replacing the blast furnaces at Gary Works with Direct Reduction - a cleaner, more efficient process that will be more competitive and assure steelworker jobs far into the future," said Dorreen Carey, President of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development (GARD).

To keep blast furnaces operating safely, the bricks that line the furnace need to be replaced every 15-20 years. The process costs up to ~$400mn and is called a reline. Relining is a major capital investment that locks in decades of pollution and diverts funding from cleaner steelmaking technologies. Cleveland-Cliffs previously announced two planned relines, one at Burns Harbor in Indiana in 2027 and one at the Middletown, Ohio, facility, now that it has abandoned plans for a clean steelmaking investment. U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs are the only blast furnace operators left in the U.S. today.

“What this shows is that all of the coal-based steelmakers in the U.S. are doubling down on coal by extending the life of these polluting furnaces. Meanwhile, competitors like Hyundai are investing in modern alternatives that can benefit from being first-to-market with a clean steel product,” said Hilary Lewis, Steel Director at Industrious Labs. “Put another way, U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs are sinking capital into potential stranded assets that risk their competitive advantage in the clean steel market of the future.”

Gary Works is also likely the last mill in the U.S. still using sintered iron ore instead of pellets. Sinter plants were responsible for 92% of all hazardous air pollutants from the smokestacks or other “point source” emissions from the 11 iron and steel mills operating in the U.S. in 2011, according to an industry survey conducted by the EPA. While Gary Works likely is the only plant that uses sinter, Cleveland-Cliffs owns two sinter plants in Northwest Indiana that are used for waste management and were included in the survey. EPA is currently taking public comment on an Interim Final Rule that delays new health protections from iron and steel plants for two years, including sinter plants.

“It makes little sense to double down on coal-based steelmaking when the impacts of making steel this way on the health of communities and climate are known and avoidable,” stated Matthew Mehalik, Executive Director of the Breathe Project in Pittsburgh. “People in proximity to the Clairton Works have air quality that is worse than 96 percent of all monitored regions in the U.S. for fine particles based on the latest 3-year average from U.S. EPA monitored data.”

The health and climate impacts of this announcement ripple beyond Indiana. In Pennsylvania, U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, where tragedy recently took the lives of two workers, provides coke, a purified form of metallurgical coal, to the Gary facility. U.S. Steel has paid nearly $64 million in air pollution enforcement actions, fines, and settlements related to the Mon Valley Works's three facilities since January of 2020 (more than $900,000 per month on average for the past five and a half years).

“U.S. Steel’s decision to reline Blast Furnace 14 at Gary Works in 2026 is a decision to lock in another generation of harm,” said Qiyam Ansari, Executive Director of Valley Clean Air Now in the Mon Valley, PA. “As Executive Director of Valley Clean Air Now, I will not accept the status quo. The human cost shows up as hospital visits and funerals, with modeling estimating up to 114 premature deaths and more than 31,000 asthma symptom cases each year.  This is not only Gary’s problem. Clairton Coke Works, which supplies coke to Gary, has recently seen the tragic loss of two workers alongside more than $4 million in fines for health and environmental violations since 2021, located in the Mon Valley, where our neighbors bear this burden every day. Our communities refuse to accept a future defined by avoidable disease, unsafe worksites, and strained investments when cleaner and more competitive steelmaking is available now. I see relining as a choice to spend $300 to $400 million on yesterday’s technology rather than building a modern direct reduction and electric arc pathway that protects jobs and wins in the market.”

The Gary Works facility includes three other coal-based blast furnaces that have undergone similar maintenance in 2020, 2018, and 2013, suggesting that the useful life of all furnaces would extend until at least 2033. Taken together, the four furnaces make Gary Works the single largest climate polluter in Indiana and one of the state’s top ten industrial sources of PM2.5, NOx, CO, and lead. Using EPA data, Industrious Labs used the COBRA model to estimate that the plant is responsible for up to an estimated 114 premature deaths annually and over 31,000 cases of asthma symptoms.

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About Industrious Labs:

Industrious Labs is an nongovernmental organization focused on modernizing and cleaning up heavy industry through research and analysis, network and capacity building, and data-driven campaigns.