Report: Cleveland can't meet climate goals without changes at Cleveland Works

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The City of Cleveland will not be able to reach its stated carbon emissions reduction goals due to emissions from just one facility—Cleveland-Cliffs’ Cleveland Works steel mill—according to a new report by nonprofit Industrious Labs.

The city unveiled its latest Climate Action Plan in April, detailing a goal for the city to reduce emissions by 63.3% from 2018 levels, and to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.

According to the plan, Cleveland emitted 11.7 MMtCO2e (million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2018. A 63.3% reduction by 2030 would result in a total of 4.3 MMtCO2e in annual emissions.

But one of the city’s largest employers, the Cleveland Works steel facility, alone emitted 4.2 MMtCO2e in 2023, the last year for which data is available, according to the Industrious Labs report.

The report finds that the city cannot meet its emissions goals without Cleveland Works transiting away from coal-powered furnaces.

“It is super crucial to this plan success that the facility transition to clean steelmaking. And in fact, without transitioning this facility, the city can’t achieve its goal,” said Industrious Labs steel director Hilary Lewis, who co-authored the report.

Cleveland-Cliffs did not respond to a request for comment. Last year it met a target of reducing its overall emissions 25% from its 2017 levels and set a new target of 30% by 2035.

However, the company said much of the reductions would come from a planned transition to cleaner hydrogen power at its Middletown Works facility. The $1.6 billion project, which was set to receive a $500 million grant from the Department of Energy, was cancelled in June due to a lack of available hydrogen.

The Cleveland Mayor’s Office of Sustainability decarbonization strategist Tim Kovach wrote in a statement,

“The City of Cleveland appreciates this valuable report from Industrious Labs. The report correctly notes that the Cleveland Works steel facility is the largest source of both climate pollution and air pollution emissions in the City. Cleveland cannot meet our ambitious, science-based climate targets unless Cleveland-Cliffs takes concrete actions to decarbonize its steel production. The City has worked closely with Cliffs in recent years to identify plans to invest in sustainability and decarbonization at Cleveland Works. Unfortunately, Cliffs appears to be stepping back from some of its more ambitious climate commitments, including its project at its Middletown Works, which could provide a model for decarbonizing the Cleveland Works facility.”

A separate report by the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency (NOACA) also listed “net zero steelmaking at Cleveland-Cliffs” as one of six “go big strategies” to reduce emissions in northeast Ohio.

Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, who represents Cleveland, said companies were delaying plans to decarbonize due to new policies under the Trump administration, such as freezing new funding allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act to decarbonize production of steel, among other materials.

“We have had these resources available to these institutions, and they’ve been doing good work. I could see if they weren’t doing good work, but they’ve been delivering results. And that is the problem right now,” said Brown.

Facilities like Cleveland Works are also facing less pressure from the government to reduce their carbon footprint. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order exempting steel plants from federal emissions limits under the Clean Air Act.