Midrex Participates in White House Roundtable

Friday, March 3, Midrex President & CEO Stephen C. Montague joined executives from the industrial private sector, labor leaders, and government officials to explore ways for the United States to take a leading role in expanding the global clean energy economy. The White House Roundtable Discussion focused on how public and private investments, when paired with new programs under the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, can quicken the pace of industrial decarbonization and increase American competitiveness.

Montague was asked to address how leveraging federal programs and incentives (tax credits, grants, loans, etc.) can help to decarbonize iron and steel production, which accounts for between 7-9% of global CO2 emissions. He cited how Midrex innovation for green iron is being utilized by two commercial-scale hydrogen-based projects:

1. H2 Green Steel in Boden, Sweden uses renewable electricity to produce green hydrogen through electrolysis, which will be used in a MIDREX H2™ plant to produce DRI that will be fed into an electric melter along with scrap to make green steel with about 95% less carbon emissions than traditional steelmaking; and
2. thyssenkrupp Steel in Duisburg, Germany, will replace its traditional integrated steelmaking operation with a DRI-Electric Melter combination that includes a MIDREX Flex™ plant, which can be transitioned to 100% hydrogen as sufficient hydrogen becomes available.

Montague said favorable government policies toward green electricity, hydrogen production, and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) provide unique opportunities to create American jobs by building new DR plants to produce green iron for use at home and abroad.

“There is a race to commercialize new technologies,” Montague said. “Private and public funding, like the Inflation Reduction Act, is essential to support ongoing commercialization of ‘lighthouse’ decarbonization projects such as those Midrex is building abroad. We need to do the same at home because the USA is an ideal location for large-scale mega-hubs to produce green iron perhaps in cooperation with EU steelmakers facing with much higher energy costs”.