After hearing of a new multi-billion dollar steel mill planned for Iowa, local green steel advocate Carolyn McCrady said she was excited for the future of steelmaking.
McCrady also said she hopes it encourages a transition to green steelmaking in Northwest Indiana.
“It’s either you get on the train or you get left behind,” said McCrady, a member of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, a local interest group that advocates for green steelmaking at U.S. Steel’s Gary Works. “That is exciting because that means there’s worldwide pressure that’s happening.”
On Sept. 28, President Donald Trump and Mesabi Metallics executives announced plans for a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa, saying it will be the country’s largest, according to the Associated Press. The mill is expected to produce 10 million tons of steel one year after it’s fully built out.
According to Mesabi Metallics’ website, the company will also invest $3 billion for an iron ore mine in Minnesota. The investments are expected to create more than 8,000 permanent and construction jobs.
The facility will also have direct reduction and electric arc furnaces, which are the technologies Northwest Indiana activists have tried to urge area mills to transition to use.
According to the Association for Iron and Steel Technology, direct reduction creates sponge iron, which “is produced in a reactor by direct reduction of iron ore in solid form, utilizing natural gas as the reducing agent to produce pellets or briquettes.”
Direct reduction by itself cannot create steel, according to a previous statement from U.S. Steel, and direct reduced iron is a feedstock used in electric arc furnaces to produce steel. U.S. Steel is investing $1.9 billion into a direct reduced iron facility in Osceola, Arkansas.
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“Gary Works, if it wants to stay competitive, must modernize with the (direct reduction) technology,” McCrady said.
In a statement to the Post-Tribune, U.S. Steel said Mesabi Metallics’ mill is being constructed from the ground up to accommodate direct reduced iron production.
“Gary Works is a long-established integrated mill that supplies critical steel to the auto industry — more than 3 million tons annually of specialized automotive steel and tin grades that cannot be produced through (electric arc furnace) technology at this point,” the statement said. “As we’ve said previously, converting Gary Works into an EAF facility would mean shutting down the entire plant, demolishing it, and building new facilities. This would effectively shutter the plant for years, leading to significant job losses and greatly reducing our ability to serve the automotive market.”
Gary Works currently uses blast furnace technologies, which McCrady and other green steel activists have said is outdated, polluting and harmful to public health and the environment.
In September, U.S. Steel completed a $350 million reline of Gary Works’ blast furnace #14, made possible by the partnership with Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel.
“The train has left the station,” McCrady said. “This new plant is going to be online, presumably, in 2030. … That means U.S. Steel will become a dinosaur if they do not modernize.”
In a statement to the Post-Tribune, a U.S. Steel representative said the company is modernizing and investing in Gary Works to “increase competitiveness and protect jobs for generations to come.”
“We are committing at least $10.8 billion company-wide by 2028, including over $3 billion in planned investments in the coming years and $600 million in near-term Gary Works projects — the Blast Furnace #14 reline, Hot Strip Mill upgrades, and the Gary Tin Mill restart,” the emailed statement said. “These investments position Gary Works as a key competitor producing the steels customers are demanding, particularly in the auto industry.”
A Cleveland-Cliffs spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Lisa Vallee, organizing director for Just Transition Northwest Indiana, said she also worries about the future of the region’s mills if they aren’t modernized.
“Not only is this massive facility going to be built outside of Indiana, in Iowa, it is going to be using these technologies that we’ve been demanding come to our mills here,” Vallee said. “… It’s really scary to think of the future here if that facility does get built, and I think our elected officials need to be focusing on this topic and the fact that we really need to fight for the future of steel in Northwest Indiana.”
Vallee also said she hopes that U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel use the remaining planned investments for greener technologies, especially at Gary Works. Through her work, Vallee said she’s heard from steelworkers that the time of blast furnaces is over.
“It’s not just environmentalists that are saying this, and we’re not making it up,” she said. “This is what’s happening, and it puts the region that relies so heavily on the three integrated mills in a very desperate place.”
In a statement, Hilary Lewis, steel director at Industrious Labs, said Mesabi Metallics’ investment is important and predictable for the future of iron and steelmaking in the U.S. However, Lewis said it directly threatens existing mills in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“Over the past decade, steel production in the U.S. has remained relatively flat, and as new, cleaner furnaces have come online, older furnaces have closed. The writing is on the wall for the few coal-based furnaces left in the U.S.: modernize, or lose out,” Lewis said. “This is a wake-up call for industry decision makers, elected leaders, and communities across the Midwest — if they want to keep the steel industry that helped build our buildings, bridges, cars and the modern middle class, they need to invest in cleaner, modern iron and steel technology today.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council, on Sept. 14, put out a study that says expanding domestic production of direct reduced iron will help build a resilient, competitive and cleaner American steel industry.
Caroline Kim, climate and energy technical analyst for the NRDC, said ironmaking is the most polluting part of the process, and most steel mills are shifting away from heavily polluting technologies.
“The (electric arc furnace) process is much cleaner,” Kim said, “and this transition happened because (electric arc furnaces) are cheaper to build, cheaper to run and more flexible to meet market conditions.”
Kim also said replacing blast furnaces is “a promising pathway” for the future of steel mills. However, she said it’s a “great path forward” if mills don’t have to close.
“We think for companies, like U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs, to remain competitive in the increasingly volatile future, that it makes sense for them to transition away from this really old and dirty technology,” Kim said.
Christina Theodoridi, director of heavy industry, climate and energy for the NRDC, said there’s still risks for mills that could move forward with a transition to clean steelmaking.
Theodoridi mentioned Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown Works plant, which planned to move to clean technology after being selected to receive up to $500 million from the federal Department of Energy to replace its blast furnace.
In 2025, Cleveland-Cliffs announced it planned to use the funds to continue coal-based steelmaking and reline the facility’s blast furnace.
Theodori said the Middletown Works scenario creates concerns that similar projects could fall apart.
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“There were real benefits in reducing operational costs, flexibility of operations, and crucially, you are also significantly reducing pollution in those communities while maintaining active assets and union jobs,” she said. “I think that’s the future of the steel industry if we want to maintain a vibrant steel industry that is not falling into that trade-off of pollution versus jobs.”