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Nippon Steel, the parent company of U.S. Steel, is moving forward with its plans to renovate a giant coal-fueled furnace in Gary, Indiana.
The Japan-based steel manufacturer, which acquired U.S. Steel in June, will begin “relining” its largest blast furnace at the Gary Works steel mill in 2026, U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt said this week at an industry conference in Atlanta, details first reported by the Japanese newspaper Nikkei.
Such an investment can extend a furnace’s operating life by up to 20 years — prolonging the company’s reliance on coal-based steelmaking, and potentially delaying America’s broader transition to low-carbon manufacturing methods.
Nippon Steel has committed to spending around $300 million to revamp Blast Furnace No. 14, the largest of four blast furnaces still operating at the sprawling Gary Works complex on Lake Michigan. The Japanese steelmaker said it will spend a total of $3.1 billion across Gary Works as part of a $11 billion capital investment in U.S. Steel’s footprints through 2028.
“Gary Works supports a large number of jobs and demand in the Midwest, and we are moving forward with numerous investment plans to support the industry,” Burritt said at the conference, adding that U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel expect to announce more specific details about their plans soon. (A spokesperson for U.S. Steel confirmed Burritt’s remarks in an email.)
Blast furnaces make the iron that’s turned into high-strength steel, an essential material found in everything from cars, boats, and planes to buildings, bridges, and roads.
The scorching-hot furnaces combine iron ore with purified coal, or “coke,” and limestone to produce liquid iron, which is then moved into a separate furnace to become steel. Only seven of these integrated iron and steel facilities are currently operating in the United States, accounting for about a quarter of total U.S. steel production. But the steel mills are responsible for around 75% of the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. They’re also among the biggest sources of toxic air pollution in the communities where they operate.
A recent report by the Environmental Integrity Project found the Gary Works complex is a major source of health-harming pollutants like chromium, which can cause breathing problems and increase the risk of lung cancer.
America’s blast furnaces — among the oldest in the world — use specialized bricks that degrade over time. When that happens, companies can decide to undertake a costly and lengthy maintenance process to replace the bricks and prop up aging plants. Or they can put that money toward building cleaner facilities that make use of “direct reduced iron” technology that doesn’t require coal.
Climate advocates and community groups in Gary, Indiana, are urging Nippon Steel to take the second route.
“Today, the company is at a crossroads,” Toko Tomita, campaigns director at the advocacy group SteelWatch, said in a statement. “If this relining decision goes ahead, it would be a slap in the face for communities, and a coffin-nail for Nippon Steel’s reputation on climate.”
Tomita said that relining the Gary Works furnace is “an extremely short-sighted move” that will leave Nippon Steel with outdated facilities at a time when automakers and other major steel buyers are increasingly signaling their demand for products made using lower-emission methods.
At the moment, however, America’s steelmakers seem committed to keeping their coal-based mills up and running.
Along with its four Gary Works blast furnaces, U.S. Steel operates two blast furnaces at its Edgar Thomson plant in the Mon Valley Works in southwestern Pennsylvania — the same complex that suffered a deadly explosion on Aug. 11 at a coke-producing plant. Nippon Steel has announced plans to schedule all six blast furnaces for relining or major repairs by 2030 in order to “extend their useful lives for many years to come.”
Cleveland-Cliffs, the only other U.S. steelmaker that uses coal-fueled facilities, operates blast furnaces across its steel mills in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. The Ohio-based firm has said it plans to reline a furnace at its Burns Harbor steel plant in Indiana in 2027.
On an earnings call last month, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves confirmed that, in addition to the relining, the company is no longer pursuing a federally supported project to build a new green steel facility in Middletown, Ohio. Cleveland-Cliffs is instead working with the Trump administration to “preserve and enhance” its Middletown steel mill using fossil fuels.
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