Cleveland-Cliffs got $500M to decarbonize. It might use it to double down on coal.

It’s been nearly a year since Cleveland-Cliffs announced it’s deserting its initiative to decarbonize its Middletown, Ohio, steelworks with hydrogen.

Now, the manufacturer has applied for an air permit to prolong its fossil fuel-burning future for the next few decades.

Its filings to Ohio permitting agencies call for refurbishing its blast furnace from the 1950s and installing a co-generation plant to capture and reuse excess gas produced from steelmaking.

Residents and environmentalists fear the company will be short-changing the community on emissions reductions, should it bring the plan to bear.

And currently, it’s unclear whether the company will use hundreds of millions of public dollars from the Biden-era intended for industrial decarbonization to carry out the maintenance project.