Jane Williams read the announcement with dismay.

A Pennsylvania company received tens of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees to turn plastic waste into a fuel for steelmaking, claiming the climate would benefit.

“This is one of the craziest ideas I’ve seen,” said Williams, who leads the environmental group California Communities Against Toxics and chairs the Sierra Club’s national clean air team. “Have they lost their minds?”

Williams is among over 100 representatives of environmental and community groups, including Beyond Plastics, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, urging U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to reverse the agency’s July decision to commit $186.2 million of Inflation Reduction Act funding to International Recycling Group.

The commitment is conditional: The company’s plans must undergo an environmental review and meet other financial and technical requirements. The Energy Department asserts that replacing coke, a coal-derived fuel, in blast furnaces used for steelmaking will reduce global emissions.

But in their Aug. 26 letter to Granholm, the groups argued that “burning plastic in place of coal is not a climate solution, it merely substitutes one form of fossil fuel with another.”

Williams does not accept the company’s claims that the plastic fuel it wants to make, dubbed CleanRed, won’t add to the already potent toxic air emissions associated with steel production.

“There are no steel mills in the United States that burn plastic,” Williams stated. “No one has any idea what the emissions profile of burning plastic will be.”

The Energy Department defended its decision to support the proposal, which includes constructing a large plastic waste sorting and processing plant in Erie with plans to collect plastic from as far as 750 miles away.

An agency spokesman said the company’s plans align with the Energy Department’s “mandate to deploy innovative technologies that decarbonize our economy while ensuring that the benefits of investments flow to surrounding communities.”

“No one has any idea what the emissions profile of burning plastic will be.”

The spokesman said the project “reinforces President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to create good-paying, high-quality job opportunities in communities across the country and ensure workers benefit from America’s growing clean energy economy.”

Mitch Hecht, the chairman of International Recycling Group, expressed confusion at the criticism of his company’s plans.

“We are completely baffled by what appears to be a national campaign to attack all plastic recycling,” Hecht said. “It makes absolutely zero sense from any true environmentalist perspective that we are going to just prefer to stop the effort to recycle more plastic.”

A Benefit to Disadvantaged Communities, or a Blow?

Last year, the Energy Department said in a notice to prepare an environmental assessment that the fuel made from plastic waste at the proposed Erie plant would go to a steel mill in northwest Indiana, where it is among the nation’s largest polluters.

U.S. Steel declined to comment on whether it would accept the plastic waste, and Hecht also declined to specify its destination.

Gary residents with the groups Gary Advocates for Responsible Development and Just Transition Northwest Indiana joined their environmental colleagues in signing the letter.

“Using plastic pellets in the blast furnace iron-producing process not only creates a new and untested environmental hazard in steel mill fence-line communities, but it also threatens steelworker jobs and the sustainability of the mill itself by delaying investments in newer green technologies,” said Dorreen Carey, president of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development.

Among those emerging technologies are those using hydrogen and electricity.

In Erie, local residents have been debating the potential merits or environmental problems associated with the plastics proposal since it was announced in 2020.

The project has support from local government and state lawmakers, Reps. Pat Harkins and Bob Merski. In a July press release, they said it would create more than 300 jobs and thanked the Biden-Harris administration for backing the Erie project.

Merski called the announcement “a beacon of hope for a cleaner, greener future.” Harkins said: “This substantial investment would catalyze the construction of a state-of-the-art plastics recycling facility, positioning Erie as a national leader in sustainable practices and innovation.”

But Russell Taylor, a retired social studies teacher from Erie, expressed concerns about the size and scale of the planned facility, increased truck traffic, fire risks, and the potential for microplastic particles contaminating Lake Erie.

Taylor, a spokesman for the local group Our Water, Our Air, Our Rights, also questioned the company’s business plan. He doubted that other communities would give up the types of plastic waste that are easier to recycle and have higher commercial value, leaving only the hardest-to-recycle, lowest-quality plastic waste for Erie.

The environmentalists’ letter to Granholm has drawn national attention to Taylor’s group’s concerns.

“There are so many better ways to spend $182 million to work on the environment,” Taylor said. “What is attractive about this?”

The Energy Department in a press release announced the loan guarantee, touting the plan’s consistency with Biden’s Justice40 initiative, aiming to deliver 40 percent of the “overall benefits” of environmental and energy investments to “disadvantaged communities.”

The agency noted that the Erie plant would be located in a disadvantaged community and “the steel manufacturer is also located in a disadvantaged community.”

The environmental groups contended that “Erie and Gary communities are historically underserved, yet this project threatens to worsen public health issues they already endure.”

Permit Application Deficiencies Found

In a permit application to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the company says the plant will collect as much as 160,000 tons of plastic waste a year. That’s enough to fill up to 8,000 20-ton trucks.

The application details that the incoming plastic waste would be sorted, cleaned, and in certain cases extruded into pellets to be sold for mechanical recycling, typically transforming waste plastic into new products.

In total, the company plans to produce about 100,000 tons of plastic pellets per year this way, according to the Energy Department.

The plan also calls for producing 20,000 tons of CleanRed, involving shredding plastic and removing contaminants. The coke substitute would be stored in silos and shipped out to customers in tank trucks or rail cars.

International Recycling Group’s permit application describes the Erie plant as a minor source of particulate pollution, the often too-small-to-see particles that harm people’s health. Pennsylvania regulators are requesting more information to justify that category.

On Aug. 12, the state environmental protection department wrote to the company, identifying technical deficiencies. It asked for clarification on proposed emissions limits and an explanation of why certain pollution control technologies were not feasible.

The Energy Department stated it will complete an environmental analysis of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act before any money is released. The study is on hold until the company progresses further with state permitting.

“This is an operation that includes shredding, among other things,” said Alex Bomstein, executive director of the Clean Air Council. “It also involves a lot of truck traffic. Both of those create particles that get suspended in the air, and workers inside the facility may breathe in those particles. People living nearby may also breathe in those particles.”

Bomstein also voiced concerns about the potential release of hazardous air pollutants due to the nature of plastic, which is made from thousands of chemicals, many of them toxic.

“Another concern is the labeling of this ‘CleanRed’ product, which is just shredded residual waste,” Bomstein said. “It is not an innovative product. People have been burning trash for many, many years. This is just that.”

Hecht said the “notion that we are burning plastic is false.” He described the material as “consumed” or “vaporized” inside a furnace at over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a “chemical process.”

Hecht mentioned that steel mills in Japan and Europe use plastic as a coke substitute, with real carbon dioxide emission reductions, but declined to provide the environmental study supporting the climate benefits of using his product.

“It is not an innovative product. People have been burning trash for many, many years. This is just that.”

The Energy Department stated that U.S. steel production accounts for 7 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions. Assuming a 14 percent replacement rate of coking coal in blast furnaces, the plastic fuel would result in a 24 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from this process.

The department declined to provide the “internal” analysis behind that claim.

Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and founder of Beyond Plastics, criticized the Energy Department’s climate justification.

The future of low-carbon steel-making isn’t with plastic waste, and the Energy Department knows that, Enck said. She pointed out that the agency in March announced $6 billion for 33 commercial-scale demonstration projects to decarbonize energy-intensive industries, including steel manufacturing.

Granholm visited Middletown, Ohio, where Cleveland-Cliffs is to get $500 million to retire a coke-fired blast furnace and switch to new electric technology with hydrogen.

“Using IRA money to prop up blast furnaces is not consistent with other funding decisions by the DOE,” Enck said. “If finalized, this project would make plastics the new coal. IRA money is supposed to be used to improve the environment, not worsen it.”

James Bruggers

Reporter, Southeast

James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers.

Original Story at insideclimatenews.org