Published by: Alesha Alkaff<>
4 Mar 2025 @ 20:55 UTC

US President Donald Trump’s federal funding freeze for environmental and energy projects reflected a necessary evaluation process of incoming investments, Phil Bell, president of the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) told Fastmarkets in an interview during the Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI)-SMA Annual Meeting on Monday March 3.

In the first few hours back in office on January 20 for his second term as president, Trump signed an executive order (EO) titled Unleashing American Energy, which paused the disbursement of funds made available under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act (IIJA), including Department of Energy (DOE) loans and grants.
A federal judge in Washington then extended a block on Trump’s blanket freeze on all governmental grants and loans, including the Unleashing American Energy EO, on February 25.
An example of funding under the IRA and IIJA directed to boost decarbonization could be found at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown Works, in the US state of Ohio, which was recently awarded an initial $9.5 million for its first phase during the administration of former President Joe Biden in September 2024.
The project was expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tonnes per year, according to the DOE.
The steel association’s members include electric-arc furnace-based steel producers Nucor, Steel Dynamics, JSW Steel USA and SSAB.
A lot of [SMA] members didn’t even apply for the grants. They didn’t need to, because it made sense as part of their business and strategic plans to go down these pathways, Bell said. The EAF industry is based on the major tenets of the circular economy, and none of them are drawing away from their commitments.
Bell expressed the hope that the Trump administration will be surgical about IRA funding, which could be poured into steel-intensive projects.
EAF steelmaking to increase by 2030 The use of electric-arc furnace in the production of steel is going to grow, Bell said, expecting the proportion of EAF steelmaking in the US to reach 80% by the end of the decade, up from 70% currently.
There will always be a need for integrated steel production, but you have a safe, sustainable, commercially proven, lower-carbon steelmaking process, and we should expand it, he told Fastmarkets.
Looking ahead, he expected the domestic steel industry to place increasing importance in a mill’s production route, which could accelerate the decarbonization of the industry.
That’s not to say that hydrogen-based or electrolytic-based steelmaking are not in the offing, Bell added, but we have something right now where most of the developed world can get started on a path to a cleaner and greener steel industry.
ITC GHG emissions data to help pursue single emissions standard The report issued on February 27 by the US’ International Trade Commission (ITC), on its investigation assessing the intensity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from steel and aluminium produced in the country, can be used to develop a single standard for emissions, Bell said.
What’s central now is that we use this data to pursue a standard in which everybody plays by the same rules, and you don’t have standards that prop up high-emissions steelmaking for any longer than there needs to be, Bell said. We need to harmonize around a single standard that will lead to faster decarbonization. And I think this data will help.