A hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city’s economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.
Its future, however, may hinge upon $500 million in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a “scam” and is a Trump target for demolition.
In March, Joe Biden’s administration announced the US’s largest ever grant to produce greener steel, enabling the Cleveland-Cliffs facility in Middletown to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world, cutting emissions by a million tons a year by ditching the coal that accelerates the climate crisis and befouls the air for nearby locals.
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When campaigning for the Senate in 2022, Vance said Biden’s sweeping climate bill is “dumb, does nothing for the environment and will make us all poorer,” and more recently as vice-presidential candidate called the IRA a “green energy scam that’s actually shipped a lot more manufacturing jobs to China.”
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It is frustrating that Couchfucker doesn’t want this and for the wrong reasons.
one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world
Hydrogen powered shit is dumb. Like, super dumb. It is nearly impossible to store the shit without it corroding the tanks, fittings, whatever. So maintenance cost will be a killer in the long run. Nevermind the whole Hindenburg-esque possibility of the plant. Worse than that, unless that hydrogen is coming from renewable sources (aka. “green” hydrogen), it will actually be way worse for the environment. Most of the shitty sources are actually fossil fuels (aka. “blue” hydrogen). And guess who would love to make and sell hydrogen from fossil fuels and is therefore lobbying for government projects for this kind of shit? That’s right, our “friends” Big Oil.
Hossenfelder discusses this in her video Hydrogen Will Not Save Us. Here’s Why. https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE
So yeah. I hate agreeing with Couchfucker about this one very specific point.
Hydrogen powered shit is dumb.
I had the same skepticism, so I looked into it. The TL;DR is that this isn’t that. It’s not using the hydrogen as a fuel source; it’s using it as reactant in the reduction reaction that produces metallic iron from iron oxide, so that it does { FexOy + H2 ⟶ Fe + H2O } instead of { FexOy + CO ⟶ Fe + CO2 }.
(For the record: I completely agree with everything you wrote, except for the small mistake of assuming “hydrogen powered shit” was an accurate description of this particular project.)
