Oct 26, 2023 · 45m · green-blueprint
Tackling the tough stuff: steel, cement, and chemicals
Jeff St. John · 13m spoken Julian Spector · 12m spoken Stephen Lacey · 8m spoken Maria Gallucci · 8m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Canary Media journalists examine the breakthrough technologies, economic realities, and policy mechanisms driving decarbonization across the heaviest industrial sectors, including steel, cement, chemicals, and clean hydrogen.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 3.5 Guest disagreement 0.1 The hosts pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 27:09 Spector rejects conventional cheap-hydrogen comparison
Spector pushes back against standard industry narratives by explaining that cheap fossil hydrogen is captive to petrochemical refineries rather than accessible to open buyers.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 6:19 Lacey clarifies chemical alteration vs electrificationLacey steps in to pinpoint that proposed ethylene solutions address process thermal energy rather than core chemical feedstock composition.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 20:27 St. John breaks down calcination chemistry and SCM economicsSt. John educates the room on the precise chemical emissions of calcium carbonate decomposition and the financial upside of supplementary cementitious materials outlined by the DOE.
The host holds their own ▶ 16:06 Lacey introduces Latitude Media electrolyzer findingsLacey directly brings in his own newsroom's market research on electrolyzer supply-demand logjams to contextualize hydrogen production roadblocks.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Icebreaker: The Toughest Things We Have Ever Built | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Lacey establishes the episode theme after lighthearted banter about building treehouses and trebuchets, citing macroeconomic Rhodium Group data on industrial emissions overtaking power and transport. | |
| Electrifying Ethylene and Cleaning Up Petrochemicals | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Gallucci explains ethylene as a petrochemical building block and breaks down the 90% emission footprint of steam cracking, while Lacey clarifies electrification vs chemistry changes. | |
| Green Steel Innovations and Electrowinning Iron | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | St. John explains electrowinning iron chemistry and modular ore processing, with Lacey probing commercial readiness and backing from Breakthrough Energy Ventures. | |
| The Realities and Economics of Green Hydrogen | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Spector details green hydrogen deployment and DOE hub funding, while Lacey contributes Latitude Media's own reporting on the chicken-and-egg bottleneck in electrolyzer markets. | |
| Decarbonizing Cement and Concrete Chemistry | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Gallucci and St. John deliver an in-depth breakdown of limestone calcination chemistry, supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), and DOE Liftoff report cost curves. | |
| Commercial Timelines: Near-Term vs. Distant Industrial Solutions | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Spector challenges conventional wisdom regarding green hydrogen cost competitiveness against fossil fuels, while Gallucci and St. John assess commercial adoption timelines across steel and cement. | |
| Market Structure, Procurement Power, and Supply Chains | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Lacey asks about startup vs legacy industry dynamics; St. John and Spector map out public procurement levers in cement, vertically integrated hydrogen developers, and legacy steel makers. | |
| Reasons for Optimism Across the Heavy Industry Transition | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The panel reflects on tangible progress over the past decade, highlighting concrete pilots, public buyer pressure on steelmakers, and groundbreaking hydrogen infrastructure. |
Statements from this episode (16)
US industrial emissions will surpass power and transport by 2035
“The industrial sector is set to overtake power generation and transportation as the biggest source of planet warming emissions in the U.S. By twenty-thirty-five.”
Global industry emits more CO2 than all transportation combined
“Industry around the world accounts for more carbon dioxide emissions than all forms of transportation combined, and that's largely driven by steel, cement, and chemicals.”
Ethane cracking heat generates 90% of ethylene facility CO2 emissions
“And so this sort of, this process of generating heat to crack ethane accounts for 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with an ethylene steam cracking facility.”
The steel industry accounts for up to 9% of global carbon emissions
“So the steel industry is responsible for as much as nine percent of CO₂ emissions worldwide every year, and the majority of those emissions come from the, sort of, the blast furnaces and the basic oxygen furnaces, which heat and process coal products, fossil f…”
Electra's low-temperature electrolysis pilot produces iron at over 99% purity
“This company called Electra out of Boulder, Colorado, is working on a process that it's piloted showing that it can get pretty pure iron, like, 99 point odd percent pure, out of this electrolysis process.”
US DOE commits $7 billion to regional hydrogen hubs
“President Biden announced these hydrogen hubs where the DOE is, is putting a total of seven billion dollars into these regional clusters of hydrogen production and use and transportation and distribution in different corners of America.”
The US currently lacks commercial-scale green hydrogen production facilities
“We actually don't have capacity to do that in the U.S. Today. There's a lot of Fossil-based carbon-emitting hydrogen in the US today. I couldn't find any, like, commercial scale, like, real operation pumping out green hydrogen yet”
Cement production generates 8% of global emissions, primarily from limestone calcination
“Cement and concrete are responsible for about eight percent of human-caused CO₂ emissions every year. About 40% of those emissions come from burning fossil fuels to heat the kilns. The other 60% comes from the chemical process of calcination”
Green cement is commercially unviable if it delays building construction timelines
“Cement costs are about maybe two, three, four percent of an overall building cost. The cost of labor and the time it takes to build a building are a lot higher than that. You could have a much lower carbon cement, but if it takes three to five times as long to…”
Inflation Reduction Act hydrogen production tax credits reach $3 per kilogram
“The credits in the Inflation Reduction Act Go up to three dollars a kilogram.”
Most fossil-based hydrogen is captive and consumed directly within petrochemical hubs
“Most of the fossil-based hydrogen isn't really getting sold out to the market anyways. It's kind of being created in these petrochemical hubs and then put right back into refining or chemicals processes.”
Sweden's HYBRIT project successfully produces steel using 100% green hydrogen
“The hybrid project in Sweden is already making steel using a hundred percent green hydrogen. Other projects are in the works. There's about 40, a few dozen in the works.”
China accounts for roughly half of all global cement production
“About half the world's global cement production takes place in China”
US government contracts account for roughly half of all domestic cement
“Roughly half the cement that's used in the United States, for example, is contracted by governments to build essentially roads in public works”
US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs are the only remaining US blast furnace operators
“In the United States, U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs are actually the only two companies that still operate blast furnace and basic oxygen furnaces, but there are a handful of other companies that operate these electric arc furnaces using scrap metal, Nucor b…”