Green Steel Jobs Multiply With Biden Energy Plan, Granholm Says

Jennifer Granholm features prominently as a chief seller of Biden’s climate and economic agenda this election year, crisscrossing the US promising CEOs and workers alike that a clean energy transition can create good-paying union jobs and revitalize manufacturing towns.

The energy secretary’s regular appearances at national labs, transmission line ribbon-cuttings, and in homes that have installed heat pumps and insulation highlight the scope of her agency’s reach and funding prowess following the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021 and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The department has hired hundreds of people to dole out some $62 billion in infrastructure spending alone.

On Monday, the Butler Works’ steel coils and an oversize American flag were the backdrop for Granholm to tout her agency’s commitment to prodding a sustainable steel industry.

The Butler Works plant supports 1,300 jobs in the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania and makes about 1 million tons of steel annually, much of it used in boxy electrical equipment seen along power lines across the country.

The plant’s operator, Cleveland Cliffs Inc., has seen its fortunes rise from the Biden administration’s distribution transformer energy efficiency standard finalized this month along with up to $575 million in grant funding announced in March to lower emissions.

“The president’s industrial strategy incentivizes making it irresistible to manufacture here at home, here in Pennsylvania,” Granholm said after a tour of the works, flanked by union leaders, a bipartisan duo of local congressmen, and the company’s CEO Lourenco Goncalves.

“Offshoring softened our manufacturing backbone, and countries like China stomped on it,” Granholm said, estimating 60,000 US factories shuttered due to unfair trade policies. “Today, President Biden has flipped that script. He has delivered an intentionally crafted industrial strategy to bring manufacturing back to the United States.”

Biden’s Agenda

The steel mill visit kicked off a week of Earth Day-themed events coordinated by the White House that will send Granholm to Salt Lake City to talk about the power grid and to Albuquerque, N.M., to discuss US manufacturing of wind and solar components.

Whether the administration can parlay that money and policy into electoral success depends on places like Western Pennsylvania.

The Keystone State voted for former President Donald Trump in 2016 before turning out in 2020 for President Joe Biden, who campaigned heavily in the state on union bonafides.

Cleveland-Cliffs, founded in 1847 and today the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America, is among the private sector players the administration hopes will carry momentum forward its agenda.

Monday’s event showcased the lobbying work from the United Auto Workers Local 3303—the union representing Butler Works employees—and the company in readying the plant for future demand.

The Butler Works is a collection of hangar-sized buildings that sprawls 1,300 acres in Lyndora, Pa., a town set on a steep hillside overlooking the plant about an hour north of Pittsburgh. It boasts a 230-ton furnace that recycles scrap metal brought in by rail into electrical steel used in transformers and other products needed for a rapidly expanding power grid.

Transformer Production

The Butler Works got a new lease on life this month when the department announced it would roll back plans to virtually phase out the type of steel currently produced by the plant as part of its distribution transformer energy efficiency standard.

Under the final rule, 75% of the standards could be met with grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES). The proposed rule would have required the market to shift to roughly 95% amorphous steel, a more energy efficient product.

The proposed rule drew fire from electrical manufacturers and lawmakers—including a joint letter and proposed legislation from the region’s two congressmen, Rep. Chris Deluzio, a Democrat, and Rep. Mike Kelly, a Republican. Critics charged the department was requiring too much of an industry already beset by supply chain issues, a workforce shortage, and rising demand.

Lead times for the utility sector to procure transformers could reach two years, with no signs of abating, the industry said. Cleveland-Cliffs is the only US producer of GOES, which it churns out of the Butler Works and finishes at another site in Zanesville, Ohio.

“I know there’s a shortage of transformers, and we’re going to have a bigger shortage” with federal incentives to build more clean energy and electrify transportation, Goncalves said.

“The government is listening,” he said, praising the work of the United Autoworkers in lobbying. “When we fight against each other, China wins, Japan wins, Mexico wins.”

When the department’s proposed rule was announced, investment at the plant was put on hold and jobs were uncertain, said Kevin Boozel, a Butler County commissioner and Democrat. The union successfully pressured the administration “to correct an overzealous rule.”

“You now have a future,” Boozel said to the workers Monday. “Your kids don’t have to leave like in the 1980s. You don’t have to leave to get a good job.”

The rule disappointed energy efficiency advocates who rallied in front of Energy Department headquarters this month to press the department to hold firm on upcoming standards.

The department’s transformer rule “left significant energy savings on the table,” said Lisa Frank, executive director of the Washington legislative office for Environment America. “There’s now no wiggle room” to meet efficiency goals.

Speaking with reporters after the event, Granholm said the final rule got to the right middle ground.

“This is what the process was meant to come out to,” she said. “You put out a proposal, you get input, you talk to folks who are on the ground, you work it through, and you achieve a win-win both on CO2 emissions as well as our jobs.”