The Biden administration is planning to allocate up to $6 billion for new technologies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from heavy industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, and aluminum. These industries are significant contributors to global warming, but cleaning up their emissions has been a major challenge.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced on Monday that the agency would be providing partial funding for 33 projects in 20 states to test various methods to curb emissions from factories and industrial plants. This initiative is being hailed as the largest industrial decarbonization investment in American history.
One of the recipients, Constellium, an aluminum producer, is set to receive up to $75 million to construct an innovative aluminum casting plant in Ravenswood, W.Va., which will operate on cleaner-burning hydrogen fuels instead of natural gas.
Another beneficiary, Kraft Heinz, a food manufacturer, could receive up to $170.9 million to install electric boilers and heat pumps at 10 facilities across the country. These technologies would generate the necessary heat for processes like drying macaroni without using fossil fuels directly.
Cleveland-Cliffs, a steel manufacturer, is in line to receive up to $500 million to retire a coal-consuming blast furnace in Middletown, Ohio, and replace it with two electric furnaces that use scrap to produce steel. The company will also explore methods to produce steel using hydrogen.
While these projects may not make a significant impact on U.S. emissions individually, the aim is to showcase new technologies that can be rapidly scaled up to establish a new standard for clean manufacturing in the U.S. and globally.
Heavy industry accounts for a significant portion of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, with factories burning coal or gas for various processes. Implementing solutions like industrial heat pumps or capturing carbon dioxide from cement production could help reduce emissions, but these technologies are currently costly and not widely adopted.
The Biden administration’s approach has been to invest in new technologies for industrial sectors while avoiding strict regulations that could drive factories and jobs overseas. By creating a market for low-carbon industrial materials and supporting cleaner processes, the administration aims to foster a transition to cleaner manufacturing practices.
The funding for these projects comes from the Energy Department’s Industrial Demonstrations Program, which was established by the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
The selected projects will undergo further negotiations with the agency before final funding is approved. One such project is Sublime Systems, a startup focusing on cleaner cement production methods that use electricity instead of high heat and do not release carbon dioxide. With potential funding of up to $87 million from the Energy Department, Sublime aims to build its first commercial plant in Holyoke, Mass.
These investments are crucial for advancing technologies to reduce industrial emissions, as many of these solutions are too expensive for traditional financing. The support from the Energy Department accelerates the development and deployment of these technologies to combat climate change on a global scale.
Additionally, projects utilizing thermal energy storage could receive funding to harness intermittent electricity from renewable sources for industrial heating processes. These efforts represent a diverse range of technologies that can contribute to decarbonizing the industrial sector.
