The following story is the fourth in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota. 

A Hoyt Lakes native leading a regional hydrogen partnership says the emerging fuel source could someday help make Minnesota’s Iron Range a leader in the production of green steel. 

“Yes, certainly it has great potential,” said Tom Erickson, president and chief operating officer of the Heartland Hydrogen Hub, one of seven regional projects recently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to kickstart hydrogen fuel production. “The first obvious use of hydrogen within the taconite (mining) industry is just to produce electricity.”   

The federal government is investing billions to develop regional hydrogen production hubs, intended to spur the infrastructure needed to increase the supply and lower the cost enough to make it commercially viable.  

Hydrogen emits only water vapor and warm air when burned, but it’s typically produced from natural gas in a process that creates high greenhouse gas emissions. The Heartland Hydrogen Hub will use renewable energy and nuclear power to try to reduce the climate impact, as well as the price tag.  

The initial focus will be on supplying hydrogen for ammonia fertilizer, but Erickson said the same output could also replace more carbon-intensive fuels used to heat and power taconite mining operations on the Iron Range.  

“That industry uses a lot of natural gas for heat and thermal systems, for producing the pellets,” Erickson said. “You’d have to design (the systems) quite a bit differently, but you could certainly add some hydrogen power to that and decrease the emissions from that standpoint.” 

Manipulating molecules 

The most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen has historically been difficult to harness into energy. The Hindenburg Disaster of 1937 is an infamous example that demonstrates hydrogen’s explosive qualities. 

“You can’t mine it. You can’t stick a pipe in the ground, then bring hydrogen up. You have to produce it from something else. It’s the smallest molecule, the hardest one to trap,” Erickson explained. “It’s the hardest one to move around once you’ve produced it, so we have some things that we need to get over and get behind coming up with new innovative ideas to really bring the costs down.” 

Most commercial hydrogen is produced today by separating the hydrogen atoms from methane under high heat and pressure, with many industrial facilities using natural gas as the methane source. This method produces hydrogen, carbon monoxide and a relatively small amount of carbon dioxide. 

Electrolysis splits hydrogen from water using an electric current. This method does not create any byproducts or emissions other than oxygen and hydrogen. It is the primary focus of the Department of Energy’s investment into hydrogen energy. 

The Heartland Hydrogen Hub’s projects are expected to reduce carbon emissions by roughly 1 million metric tons per year, the equivalent of 220,000 gasoline-powered cars. 

Erickson — who is also the director of exploratory research at University of North Dakota — said infrastructure for hydrogen’s use on a wider scale is in the future. 

“Shipping — whether it’s trains or whether it’s ships moving large quantities of oil around — they are even bigger targets,” he said. “Maybe even a little bit easier targets for application of the hydrogen fuel.” 

Erickson, whose grandfather and numerous other relatives worked in the taconite mines on the Iron Range, said technology to produce higher quality taconite pellets has been studied in Keewatin, where U.S. Steel plans to invest $150 million in a new higher-grade taconite plant. 

“Folks on the Range have looked at (higher grade taconite pellets) produced from natural gas, from coal derived gases and of course from hydrogen,” Erickson said. 

The Heartland Hydrogen Hub is currently in the concept development phase, and Erickson said he is excited for the advancing technology in energy for the future. 

“What I’m most excited about is to start to see larger scale production of hydrogen,” he said. “Once we start producing it, we can start to find other ways to utilize the things that advantages society, different ways that we can manipulate the molecule …. to provide clean, reliable and sustainable energy.”  

Feeling the heat 

Steel is made using a lot of heat, and coal-powered blast furnaces are still used for 57% of global steelmaking capacity. That’s a decrease from the year before, when 67% of the world’s steel capacity was made using blast furnaces — marking a shift toward electric arc furnace technology worldwide. 

The Iron Range supplies three-fourths of the country’s iron ore, from which steel is made. Steelmakers such as U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs, which own the mining operations on the Iron Range, are seeing growing pressure from governments, investors, and customers to reduce their climate emissions. It’s not just the potential for future environmental regulations. More companies are willing to pay a premium for steel that comes with a smaller carbon footprint.  

Cutting emissions from mining and other heavy industry is expected to be a bigger challenge than cleaning up cars or power plants. That’s because of the need to power massive furnaces and other equipment for which electric alternatives aren’t widely available.  

These factors are leading many manufacturers to be interested in the potential of hydrogen fuel. Cleveland-Cliffs, which owns and operates Hibbing Taconite, has already committed to funding a hydrogen power project at its Toledo plant. Without any modification to the plant, the company says it could replace up to 30% of natural gas consumption with hydrogen. And with equipment upgrades and other investments, this number could rise to 70%, accounting for 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year. 

Cleveland-Cliffs is also part of a federally funded hydrogen hub based in northern Indiana. In October, the company was recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy for cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by more than one-third. 

The company didn’t respond to requests for comment on what its emission-cutting efforts might mean for northern Minnesota, but researcher Rolf Weberg said the state’s mining industry is well-positioned to make use of hydrogen fuel. 

“It turns out that Minnesota is by far highly competitive for making green iron and steel, beyond other states in the country,” said Weberg, the executive director of University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Natural Resource Research Institute. “We have essentially all of the resources, including infrastructure for future energy and access to water. All the things you need to have for a hydrogen-based approach to preparing green iron and steel.” 

With the future of hydrogen energy, Weberg said conversations with stakeholders are only just beginning. 

“Minnesota industry has been investing to prepare for this,” Weberg said. “It’s an exciting opportunity for Minnesota to embrace, and the conversation is just started. This is an opportunity to really lead the charge in this area, and also do it in tandem with green hydrogen and green steel.”  

Green hydrogen could make Minnesota a leader in climate-friendly steel  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following story is the first in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota. 

World leaders in Dubai this week are concluding the latest United Nations conference on climate change, where experts and advocates repeated urgent pleas for governments to phase out fossil fuels and transition to clean energy. 

In Minnesota, that change is underway. A new state law requires power companies to only sell clean electricity by 2040. Electric vehicle sales are growing, and energy efficient heat pumps are starting to replace gas furnaces — even in northern Minnesota.  

But one of the biggest challenges for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota will be finding clean energy solutions for one of the state’s biggest industries: taconite mining. The state’s Iron Range supplies three-quarters of the raw material used to make domestic steel. Getting it out of the ground requires massive, diesel-powered trucks and other heavy-duty equipment for which less-polluting options aren’t yet widely available.  

The steelmaking industry is facing pressure from customers and governments to reduce its climate impact, and Minnesota mine operators Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel are both exploring new fuels and technologies to help them meet sustainability goals. 

According to the companies’ public statements to shareholders, the path forward is likely to include investments in new, more efficient vehicles and equipment, along with a switch to powering them with renewable electricity, biogas, or hydrogen instead of coal or gas. 

U.S. Steel announced in April 2021 a goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Cleveland-Cliffs says it’s already exceeded its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2030. 

The transition to clean energy could create new economic opportunities for the Iron Range, experts say, including the possibility to process iron ore on-site into a cleaner, premium product. 

A recent event hosted by the city of Duluth and the National Renewable Energy Lab called industrial decarbonization the “billion-dollar question for the Northland.” Rolf Weberg, leader of the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Natural Resources Research Institute, says industrial operations have a real interest in reducing their carbon footprints. 

“When you look globally between steel and concrete, that accounts for between 16-18% of carbon dioxide emissions globally,” Weberg explained. “Countries and industries are really trying to reduce their carbon footprint because we’re not meeting carbon goals across the globe.” 

Weberg said NREL is interested in Minnesota because of its resources. Hydrogen, for example, is a clean-burning fuel that can be produced with no emissions using water and renewable energy – both relatively plentiful in Minnesota. 

“(This includes) infrastructure for future energy, access to water — all of the things you need to have a hydrogen-based approach to preparing green iron and steel,” he said. 

Aaron Brown, a Hibbing native and columnist who has written extensively about the region’s culture and economy, says the Iron Range is in a unique position to capitalize on new technologies and production methods designed to eliminate climate emissions. For example, one strategy steelmakers are exploring involves processing higher-grade iron pellets in electric arc furnaces, which is less geographically constrained by access to coal. 

“What the new technology might do is create opportunities for entrepreneurs, and existing companies like Cleveland-Cliffs or U.S. Steel, to produce (steel) in Minnesota,” Brown said in a phone interview. “Now, whether that will happen or not, of course, is subject to speculation, but it is an opportunity to open up modern industry near the mouth of iron mines. And that should be very interesting to people in northern Minnesota.” 

On the Range 

Minnesota’s Iron Range has experienced monumental shifts since settlers found iron-rich deposits there in the late 19th century. The giants of American industry — James J. Hill, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller — collectively created U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar company, with iron ore largely mined from the Iron Range. 

Taconite is a hard, dense rock containing a mixture of silicates and magnetite. After it’s mined in vast open pits, it is crushed into a fine powder, with the magnetite extracted to eventually create marble-sized pellets that contain over 65% iron.  

Mining efforts in the Mesabi Iron Range have focused on taconite ore, a lower-grade iron ore processed from vast pits, since the 1950s. Taconite mining transformed the region after underground mining depleted the high-grade hematite deposits. Forty million tons of iron ore are mined there each year.  

That ore from Minnesota is shipped across the Great Lakes to plants from Chicago to Pittsburgh, where it is combined with coke, a product derived from coal that is shipped by rail from Appalachia to make steel. 

But what if coal were taken out of this equation? New shifts in technology are moving toward using specially formulated iron briquettes in electric arc furnaces instead of lower-grade iron materials in coal-powered blast furnaces. And Iron Range taconite plant owners Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel are both increasing production of a new type of iron pellet that does not require coal-powered blast furnaces to process into steel. Electricity can be used instead, meaning a rail connection to coal mines may no longer be necessary for processing the raw material into steel. 

These direct reduced-grade pellets are a metallic iron product instead of an iron oxide product like taconite. And they require less energy to process. The company did not respond to interview requests, but its website lists the environmental benefits of these pellets. 

“If we converted United Taconite’s full standard pellet production … net greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by approximately 370,000 tons per year,” Cleveland-Cliffs states. 

U.S. Steel announced in 2022 plans to break ground on a new $150 million direct reduced iron production facility near Keewatin on the Range. In November 2022, the company announced Keetac was the selected site for the expanded operation. Keetac currently employs about 400 people. 

“Keetac’s high quality ore body and long mine life makes it the best choice for DR-grade pellet capabilities. We will have the ability to produce both blast furnace and DR-grade pellets at Keetac in the future. These actions will allow us to become increasingly self-sufficient to feed our mini mills segment with key metallics.” 

Steel, without the fossil fuels 

Weberg defines “green” iron and steel as having no fossil fuels involved at any point in its production. 

“Our iron industry in Minnesota has been working toward this for some time,” Weberg said. “Our colleagues at Cleveland-Cliffs and at U.S. Steel have been making significant progress with direct reduced grade pellets.”  

Brown speculated about a possible future with steel created using hydrogen power and what that could mean for the Iron Range.  

“What hydrogen steel might do for Minnesota is create the opportunity … for efficient and profitable steel production near where the mining occurs — an opportunity that doesn’t exist now because the cost of getting the coke and coal …  to Minnesota is prohibitive,” Brown said.  

As in decades before, the ebbs and flows of the global steel market will continue to impact the Iron Range. As policymakers and manufacturers look toward a sustainable future, the Iron Range may be well poised to prosper in a new, green economy built on the industrious foundation of its core: mining. 

Low-emissions steelmaking could be big business for Minnesota’s Iron Range, experts say  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.