An emerging White House-backed deal to allow a Japanese firm to purchase U.S. Steel could have implications for the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.
President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally Friday in Pittsburgh to celebrate the deal, which he has described as a “planned partnership” with Nippon Steel that will be “controlled by the United States.”
But clean energy advocates are concerned that Nippon’s acquisition of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, one of the biggest American steel producers, could delay the industry’s transition away from coal-based blast furnaces.
“This deal poses real threats to steel decarbonization in the U.S.,” Astrid Grigsby-Schulte, project manager of the Global Iron and Steel Tracker at the firm Global Energy Monitor, said in an email. “On a global scale, Nippon has a lot of work to do to align with net zero goals and this extends to their acquisition of U.S. steel.”
