Pennsylvania governor secures delay in rule that could have closed steel plant

BUTLER, Pennsylvania — Sometimes political pushback works.

Seven days after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sent a forceful letter to Shalanda Young of the White House Office of Management and Budget, expressing his serious concern that her draft rule under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act went too far too quickly, the Department of Energy reversed course on a rule that would have led to the closure of the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works plant. The closure would have cost thousands of jobs in Western Pennsylvania.

In the March 13 letter, Shapiro said the EPCA rule “threatens to disrupt the domestic supply of urgently needed electrical transformers and make it more difficult for longstanding Pennsylvania companies to adapt their existing manufacturing to the future.”

Shapiro was referring to the draft rule that would require transformers to rely on amorphous steel cores instead of the grain-oriented steel used at the Butler Works plant. The proposal came at the exact same time billions of dollars in investments were needed for the increasing demand for transformers across the country.

Shapiro said the three deadlines in the current rule should be extended at least a decade, or it would “shut down one of our only resources of transformer grade steel and unfairly harm the 1,200 highly skilled Pennsylvania workers at the plant.”

One week later, on March 20, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told a congressional subcommittee that it had been listening to criticism of its proposed rule to tighten energy efficiency requirements for distribution transformers and “adjustments have been made.”

Jamie Sychak, the president of the United Auto Workers Local 3303 that represents the over 1,000 workers at the plant, told the Washington Examiner he was cautiously optimistic. “We haven’t seen the details yet, but we are grateful for everyone involved who had our workers’ back on this issue,” he said.

Sychak expressed deep concern in our interview last week that no one was listening to the very real probability their plant, which has been a manufacturing hub in Butler County for over 100 years, would fall just like all of the other plants have over the decades.

He said he is grateful for Shapiro’s flex to get things done, a flex the governor candidly dubbed his “get s*** done” mantra named after his morning meetings with the same name. That good-governing call to action was witnessed on a national level in June of 2023 when, after a Philadelphia interstate ramp collapse was projected to take months or years to rebuild, the ramp was reopened less than two weeks after it collapsed.

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Amorphous steel is produced in this country with inexpensive, and only very limited, supply, meaning for the transformers to be made for the country’s grid, we would have to rely on imports from China, Japan, and Vietnam to supply the steel for American energy needs.

“What we do here is very vital to the American economy; without transformers, new housing plans come to a grinding halt, so do large-scale business and manufacturing projects, all of which need access to a vibrant power grid,” Sychak explained, adding that without transformers, our entire supply chain is crippled as well as American steel production.