Green ironmaker Electra is about to supercharge its efforts to commercialize its technology.
On Tuesday, Boulder-based ironmaking startup announced a series of investments, deals, and plans for its first demonstration facility in Colorado.
First, the plant itself. Set to come online in the middle of next year, the 130,000-square-foot facility in Jefferson County, Colorado, will produce up to 500 tons of iron per year.
Then there’s the financing. Just months after Electra raised a $186 million Series B round, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy is set to pump $50 million in grants into the company. At the same time, the administration of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is giving the five-year-old startup an $8 million tax credit from the state’s green industrial financing program.
And finally, the buyers. One month after Microsoft agreed to buy green steel for its data centers from Sweden’s leading low-carbon steelmaker Stegra, Facebook-owner Meta is betting on Electra by buying the company’s first environmental attribute credits. The EACs are linked to the reduced emissions from Electra’s clean iron.
Electra is also announcing purchase agreements with major steel buyers. Nucor is placing an order for iron from Electra’s demonstration plant, which the United States’ largest steelmaker plans to use in its electric arc furnaces to produce green steel.
“This facility lays the groundwork for a new era of low-carbon materials, and we’re proud to support Electra as they scale their innovative solutions,” Al Behr, Nucor’s executive vice president of raw materials, said in a statement.
The Japanese steel-trading giant Toyota Tsusho plans to buy Electra’s iron and sell it to steelmakers and automakers. The European steel and metals distributor Interfer Edelstahl Group, meanwhile, plans to use Electra’s iron once it receives regulatory certification for specialty steel applications.
“It’s a milestone,” Kellyn Blossom, Electra’s head of communications and policy, told Latitude Media. “This is a big one.”
Still, she said, the company is “intentionally scaling up in phases.”
“We’re doing the demonstration plant, sending iron out to customers, and qualifying and making sure everything it’s everything they thought it would be,” Blosson added. And once that happens, the company will “build commercial scale.”
Electra’s technology isn’t new. The process, which is already used to purify metals such as copper, nickel, and zinc, involves dissolving ores into an aqueous acidic solution to separate out the desired metallic ions from the impurities, then blasting the solution with electricity to deposit those ions onto metal plates.
The result is a 99% pure iron product. For comparison, iron produced through direct reduced iron — or DRI, the leading clean process in the steelmaking industry — with green hydrogen as the fuel, has purity levels between 81% and 87.9%, according to data from the International Iron Metallics Association.
Iron made via hot briquetted iron — a process that involves compressing DRI at high temperatures into briquettes — has purity levels between 83% and 88.4%. Pig iron made in a traditional coal-fired blast furnace has purity levels between 92% and 95%.
As a result of its purity, Electra’s iron can be used for far more than just steel. Blossom said the company is exploring the potential for magnets and lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that require concentrated pure iron.
“Electra is reimagining the fundamentals of ironmaking, enabling a scalable, cost-effective pathway to low-carbon steel,” Mario Fernandez, the head of Breakthrough Energy’s Catalyst program, said in a statement.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on October 21 to correct the total of Electra’s Series B raise. It was $186 million, not $188 million.
