Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $500 million to fund and industrial transformation project at Cleveland Cliffs’ Middletown Works facility in Ohio. The funding is provided by DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations’ Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP). The project is expected to create 170 permanent jobs and 1,200 temporary union construction jobs, while sustaining the site’s existing 2,500 jobs. The new funding was announced by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm at the Middletown facility during an event attended by BlueGreen Alliance’s Ohio Regional Program Manager Lee Geisse.

Workers at the Middletown facility are represented by International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local Lodge 1943. This project would deliver an innovative overhaul of the integrated iron and steel mill with cutting-edge clean hydrogen-ready direct reduced iron technology that will drastically reduce emissions.

The IDP—made possible by initiatives championed by President Biden and Democrats in Congress and passed into law—seeks to help companies drive down emissions and reduce toxics and other pollutants in the U.S. industrial sector to make them more competitive—all while creating and sustaining good-paying, union manufacturing jobs. The award recipients were required to meet a robust set of criteria to ensure local communities and workers benefit from the proposed projects.

After the award announcement, the BlueGreen Alliance issued the following statement from Ohio Regional Program Manager Lee Geisse:

“I was honored to join Sec. Granholm today in Middletown to celebrate this transformative project. Building the cleanest products possible and a strong domestic supply chain to manufacture the nuts and bolts of a new, clean economy in the United States is vital to the future of workers right here in Ohio and across the nation. We have a rich tradition of innovation in our country and President Biden has set the stage for the revival that workers and communities have needed for decades. With the investments announced today, we see that Ohio has a vital role to play in the industrial revolution of the 21st century.

“The IDP is proof that President Biden and Democrats are invested in rebuilding U.S. manufacturing to be the backbone of our economy, helping Ohio’s workers get to and stay in the middle class with good union jobs and bringing equity and opportunities to communities that have been on the hurting end of the loss of manufacturing jobs.”