Feds, Cleveland-Cliffs tout $200M investment in Butler Works
BUTLER TWP — The U.S. Secretary of Energy and other officials visited Cleveland-Cliffs’ Butler Works plant Tuesday, Oct. 6, to tour the facility after a commitment of $75 million in federal funds to the site.
The U.S. Department of Energy is awarding the funds in support of a $200 million investment by Cleveland-Cliffs into the plant’s hot mill.
The investment project will add an industrial reheating furnace that will more precisely heat steel slabs for better yield and quality while reducing emissions, according to U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Cleveland-Cliffs representatives.
It will also add about 220 jobs at the peak of construction and increase production of grain-oriented electrical steel by up to 25%, according to company data. Work is scheduled to be completed in early 2028.
“It is a much more complicated manufacturing process with little insulation layers within these laminations in the steel,” Wright said of producing grain-oriented electrical steel. “It is a complicated steel.”
Butler Works is the only producer of grain-oriented electrical steel in the United States. The specialty steel is used to produce electrical transformers using magnetic poles that power electrical grids.
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said it’s a highly technical steel that used to be produced around the United States. However, all the other plants that produced it have closed. He said the Butler Works plant was also scheduled to close until Cleveland-Cliffs acquired AK Steel in 2020.
Work on the project this year includes installing electric substations, structural additions to the hot strip mill and stabilizing the adjacent hillside.
The $75 million grant from the federal government was awarded in March 2024 under the Biden administration. The funding passed reviewed by the Trump administration earlier this year.
“This is all part of the same program, but I’d say the main difference is that the Trump administration is focused on enabling the success of Cliffs and America as an institution that actually produces grain-oriented electrical steel,” said Assistant Energy Secretary Audrey Robertson.
The federal funding was granted to replace two natural gas furnaces with electrical induction furnaces.
She said the guidelines the Biden administration applied to the $75 million revolved around decarbonization and lowering emissions.
“It happens to be that these electric furnaces, the electric reheat furnace, is the newest and most efficient innovation to this step of grain-oriented electrical steel production,” Robertson said.
Wright said the new guidelines revolve around lowering the barriers to producing steel.
“We agree on the same technology, but the execution of this grant and the burdens we would place on Cliffs are very different in terms of, we want them to be successful as a business,” Wright said. “The Biden administration wanted them to reduce emissions and seek environmental justice.”
Goncalves added the Butler Works plant currently produces 0.54 tons of CO2 per ton of steel produced.
“You do not find in the entire world any other plant that has this CO2 footprint producing grain-oriented electrical steel,” he said.
