Cleveland-Cliffs Announces New Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Goals

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE: CLF) announced today that it has set new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets. The Company’s prior commitment to reduce absolute Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) GHG emissions by 25% by 2030, relative to 2017 levels, has already been successfully achieved well ahead of schedule.

Cleveland-Cliffs’ new goals set forth below, relative to 2023 levels, are all supported by ongoing and planned technological developments to its ironmaking and steelmaking practices:

• A target to reduce Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions intensity per metric ton of crude steel by 30% by 2035;
• A target to reduce material upstream Scope 3 GHG emissions intensity per metric ton of crude steel by 20% by 2035; and
• A long-term target aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius scenario to reduce Scope 1, 2 and material upstream 3 emissions intensity per metric ton of crude steel to near net zero by 2050.

The GHG emissions reduction from 2023 to 2035 will be driven primarily by the Middletown, OH and Butler, PA projects – both to be developed in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy, as previously announced – as well as by other operational initiatives and energy efficiency enhancement projects, all included in Cliffs’ previously announced capital expenditure plans. As a result, Cliffs’ capex outlook remains unchanged.

Lourenco Goncalves, Cleveland-Cliffs’ Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer said:

“Through the deployment of meaningful investments and our unwavering commitment to our employees and to the communities in which we operate, Cleveland-Cliffs has achieved unquestionable success in reducing GHG emissions, by more than we anticipated and way ahead of our original 2030 target date. Our outperformance has given us the ability to further pursue more ambitious and very relevant new challenges. As a manufacturing leader in America providing good paying middle-class jobs in sustainable ironmaking and steelmaking, Cleveland-Cliffs will, one more time, prove that GHG emissions reduction can and will be done preserving employment, enhancing middle-class and benefiting communities. That is our ultimate goal: to demonstrate to others in our business – in the United States and abroad – that we can be simultaneously a technological and a social leader, with goals driven by our people and for the people. Once it is done, Cliffs’ shareholders and all other stakeholders will have won together.”