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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Seems weird that a Senator from Ohio seems to be going out of his way to piss all over Ohioans.
Weird how Ohio is into it, since he’s their guy and all.
1/3 of people get forced to eat shit because 1/3 of people want everyone but themselves to have to eat shit because they wrongly think they will never have to eat the shit they are voting to have literally everyone eat.
Worst of all, 1/3 of people like having their head in the sand, being unable to develop an opinion on if being force fed shit is good or bad.
And still everyone will act shocked when they have to eat shit when they elect the “everyone is gonna eat some shit” party.
to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world
Hey, it’s a “hydrogen” thing that’s actually not blatant greenwashing, for once! I was skeptical, so I read through to the press release and Wikipedia to figure out what it was talking about, and now I’ll share with the class:
Calling this a “hydrogen fuel furnace” is misleading. The point of this thing isn’t to use hydrogen as an energy storage medium and then burn it to produce heat/fuel-cell-react it to produce electricity. Instead, the point is to use the hydrogen itself as a reactant in the reduction reaction to convert iron oxides to metallic iron. (In other words, there’s actually a good reason for it to use hydrogen specifically, unlike the hydrogen cars we more commonly hear about.)
Specifically, reduction of iron typically occurs via two paths, using either carbon monoxide (CO) or hydrogen gas (H2). In a “normal” foundry these gases are typically obtained as combustion products of burning coal and the reduction happens along a mix of the two paths.
3 Fe2O3 + CO ⟶ 2 Fe3O4 + CO2
Fe3O4 + CO ⟶ 3 FeO + CO2
FeO + CO ⟶ Fe + CO23 Fe2O3 + H2 ⟶ 2 Fe3O4 + H2O
Fe3O4 + H2 ⟶ 3 FeO + H2O
FeO + H2 ⟶ Fe + H2OUsing pure H2 as the reducing gas eliminates the first path, and produces the iron metal without needing any carbon (assuming it used “green hydrogen” (produced by electrolyzing water using electricity from renewable sources) rather than “blue hydrogen” (produced from natural gas), as doing otherwise would completely defeat the purpose).
There are two caveats, here:
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Steel plants still need carbon inputs in order to carburize the iron into steel. That’s not a problem in terms of global warming emissions as the carbon is consumed in the process and becomes part of the steel, but it does mean the thing would still consume fossil fuels. (Maybe there’s an opportunity in the future to hook it to CO2-capture systems and make it net-negative?)
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The press release describes the furnace being funded as “hydrogen-ready flex-fuel”. In other words, it’s not actually going to run in the environmentally-superior mode I described; it’s just capable of it. The actual magnitude of improvement will be fuck-all until they go further and install a “green hydrogen” source at some undetermined later date that the press release doesn’t even contemplate.
Remember kids, if someone proposes using hydrogen for something other than fertilizer or steel or rocket fuel, it’s not a good application of hydrogen
Thanks for the effort. It was very informative.
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The damage that Couch Guyliner brought to his home state, his wife, his family - all in the name of fascism as he supports Felon Drink Bleach - is incredible for all the wrong reasons.
I enjoy these nicknames, thank you
I don’t know how to break it to Ohioans, but we didn’t exactly have a high opinion of them in the first place. I don’t know if Vance is really sinking it any lower
The only Ohioans I know are ones who escaped to Washington, and they’re so glad to be out. Pretty much the same as my view on escaping from Texas.
Additional statistics about the IRA, which Trump and Vance have vowed to defund, from E2 two years into the IRA:
Nearly 60 percent of the announced projects representing 85 percent of the investments and 68 percent of the jobs - are in Republican congressional districts. This despite the fact that no Republican voted for the legislation.
https://e2.org/reports/clean-economy-works-two-year-review-2024/
They needed to pick a different abbreviation. I was really curious as to why The US was funding the Irish Republican Army.
Imagine the headline of that though: Biden funds militant Republican group in Ireland
We need to stop giving handouts to Republicans.
That’s how it works though unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of government money comes from majority democrat cities/states, and is spent in majority republican states
This is how “Fuck You, Got Mine” mentality becomes a policy platform. I wonder how Ohioans feel about electing this guy over an excellent democratic candidate for senate in 2022
We all know you make shit up for attention, Jimmy. Go fuck yourself.
“My focus is my constituents and doing what’s best for them—how else will this empty floodplain produce $1 million for people in our town?” Messer said. “Nothing is going do that but solar. I’m happy to use the IRA, but if I had a national role my view might be different. I mean printing money and giving it away to people won’t solve inflation, it will make it worse.”
This is real proof that a basic economics class should be mandatory to hold political office. This guy is the mayor and he hasn’t a clue how inflation works. Yet he’s talking to the press like he’s some kind of authority.
How curious, it is almost always the other way around.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/21/jd-vance-background-evolution-profile
https://www.energy.gov/oced/industrial-demonstrations-program-selections-award-negotiations-iron-and-steel#melting
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/joe-biden-joe-biden-green-steel-plant-jd-vance-middletown-ohio-scam/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-crisisIt 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.)
TIL!
Thanks for the links
