Nucor targets US East Coast offshore wind energy build-out

Nucor Corp's new low carbon heavy gauge steel plate product, Elcyon — to be produced at its new $1.7 billion Brandenburg, Kentucky plate mill — is designed for a planned offshore wind energy build-out on the East Coast of 30 gigawatts by 2030, according to Frank Fisher, director of energy solutions at Nucor

Nucor has invested heavily in the manufacturing capabilities at its Brandenburg plant in order to capture a significant share of the 7.5 million tons of plate that will be needed to build out the targeted capacity authorized by Congress last year, Fisher told Fastmarkets on Monday January 23.

“For offshore wind specifically, we are in the sweet spot to provide the unique [product] capabilities [required],” Fisher said. “We can meet the engineering specs from the offshore wind developers, the unique specs of the grade — the chemistry, the mechanical properties, and the gauge and piece weights.”

Further, Fisher added, Nucor’s plate can be produced with a greenhouse gas emissions intensity that is one fifth of the global average for blast furnaces, giving it a “sustainability advantage” that can help energy suppliers build “a reputation for using sustainable materials that will beat anything that they’re going to be able to get out of either Europe or Asia.”

By comparison, Nucor’s chief competitors for building out US wind power infrastructure, in Asia and Europe, use blast furnaces to make steel.

Given that low carbon steel often comes with a “green premium” or higher price, Nucor will be competing against companies that may have a lower cost structure — and with that a product pricing advantage, Fastmarkets understands.

But according to Caleb Strother, commercial director of plate and structural products at Nucor Brandenburg, Elcyon provides value for its green steel premium cost that will accrue over the life cycle of the wind projects.

While there is no current requirement that offshore wind projects purchase steel from domestic providers, Strother said the Inflation Reduction Act “incentivizes a high domestic content of components, and steel is of course a very large component of that.”

The Brandenburg plate mill can also produce much larger plates for the monopiles that are to be built offshore, allowing builders to use fewer plates and, in turn, reduce the welding requirements for the project, Strother explained.

Achieving offshore wind power goals will require a rapid scale-up of the domestic supply chain and $22.4 billion in infrastructure investments, according to the estimates of a study released on Monday by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US Department of Energy.

The NREL study was funded by the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium, with additional funds from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Maryland Energy Administration.

The Brandenburg plate mill, started in October 2020, rolled its first steel plate on December 30 and has the capacity to produce 1.2 million tons of steel annually.

Fastmarkets assessed the price of steel cut-to-length plate carbon grade, fob mill US at $71 per hundredweight ($1,420 per short ton) on January 17, flat for the fifth week in a row.

Elcyon is a trademark of Nucor Corporation.

What to read next
The publication of Fastmarkets’ Turkish steel scrap import indices was delayed on Wednesday April 2 because of a technical fault. Fastmarkets’ pricing database has been updated. The following prices were affected: MB-STE-0416 Steel scrap HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix) North Europe origin, cfr Turkey, $/tonne MB-STE-0417 Steel scrap HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix) US origin, cfr Turkey, […]
The publication of Fastmarkets’ iron ore DR-grade pellet premium, quarterly contract was delayed due to a reporter’s error. Fastmarkets’ pricing database has been updated. The MB-IRO-0077 Iron ore DR-grade pellet premium, quarterly contract was published on Wednesday April 2 – the second working day of the quarter, while usually it is published on the first […]
In the second of a two-part series, Fastmarkets looks at opportunities for the Asia ferro-alloys sector that could result from US-China trade tensions or against a backdrop of greater trade protection, ahead of the Asia Ferroalloys 2025 Conference
This consultation, which is open until April 28, 2025, seeks to ensure that our methodologies continue to reflect the physical market, in compliance with the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) principles for Price Reporting Agencies (PRAs). This includes all elements of our pricing process, our price specifications and publication frequency. You can find the […]
Fastmarkets has corrected its MB-IRO-0188 - Iron ore 67.5% Fe pellet feed cfr Qingdao and MB-IRO-0013 - Iron ore 65% Fe concentrate cfr Qingdao indices, which were published incorrectly on Wednesday March 19 due to a technical calculation error.
The adjustment, which follows a consultation which ended on Tuesday March 18, will enable Fastmarkets to track a broader range of data by incorporating major ports, including Hay Point Coal Terminal, Abbot Point Coal Terminal, Gladstone Port and Port Kembla, alongside the current Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal. To ensure consistency of the assessments, normalization of ports […]