How heavy industries contribute to climate change and what can be done to cut emissions

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• William Brangham:

  When we focus on the ways to reduce America's carbon emissions, we talk a lot about how we generate electricity and the vehicles we use to get around.

  That's because those two sectors, electricity and transportation, each contribute about a quarter to this country's pollution. And thanks to the rapid growth of renewable energy and more efficient electric cars, those sectors are starting to get much cleaner.

  But another major source of pollution is what's known as heavy industry. That's making things like cement and steel, and that sector has been much slower to adapt. This week, the Biden administration pledged $6 billion for a series of pilot projects in 20 different states to try and spur a green revolution in those industries.

  So will this help move the needle?

  For that, we are joined by Rebecca Dell. She studies how to clean up heavy industry for the ClimateWorks Foundation.

  Rebecca Dell, thank you so much for being here.

  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says that this is the biggest investment that the United States has ever made in this industry. But it sounds like we haven't really tried to do that much thus far. So I'm just trying to understand, how big an investment is this really?

• Rebecca Dell, ClimateWorks Foundation:

  Yes, that's a great question.

  So, when we talk about the industrial sector, we're talking about manufacturing, construction, all of the activities that make things, as opposed to using energy.

  And so $6 billion is by a very large margin the largest investment, not just that America has ever made, but that anybody has ever made, in cleaning up the greenhouse gas emissions from this sector. But the manufacturing sector in the United States is like a few trillion dollars a year as a portion of our economy.

  And so this is a fantastic and inspiring down payment. But, obviously, this is going to be just a start.

• William Brangham:

  So, given that there is this green energy revolution going on right now, why have these slices of the industry been somewhat slow to catch up?

• Rebecca Dell:

  Yes, so that's a great question.

  I think one of the reasons why we have seen less progress in the industrial sector is just that people only really started working seriously on it in large numbers maybe about five years ago. People have been working on electric vehicles and renewable electricity since the '90s or, depending on how you count it, maybe even since the '70s.

  And so we're at an earlier stage here. There's also additional complexity that comes because, in industrial activity, often, the greenhouse gas emissions don't just come from using energy. They also come from the chemical reactions that are happening to make the materials and the products that we want.

  And so you have to not just lock out clean energy from dirty energy, but often you have to change the nature of the process that do these things. So this is why — those are some of the reasons why it's been a little bit slower in this sector and why we really need the acceleration that will come from an investment like this one.

• William Brangham:

  So, this investment, as I said, is a series of pilot projects that have been awarded to different companies and ventures that applied for these.

  What kinds of things are getting awarded these grants? And what's it going to look like?

• Rebecca Dell:

  Yes.

  So, actually, one of the things that's so exciting about this project or about this program is that most of the projects are the stage after pilot projects. So, most of this are technologies where there's already been a pilot, and this investment is going to take it to actual commercial production stage.

  And so what we're looking at are things like using hydrogen, instead of coal, to make steel, using electrified processes to make cement, using alternative types of cement, like, for example, something called limestone and calcined clay cement, LC3, that has inherently lower emissions associated with it.

  And, also, there are projects that are using carbon capture and storage. And, basically, what that means is that you keep using the same process that emits CO2, but instead of letting that CO2 go out into the atmosphere, you capture it and then you pump it into geological formations, where it can be stored for long — for a long time.

• William Brangham:

  The Energy Department took great pride that 80 percent of these projects are going to be ending up in disadvantaged communities that had experienced — quote — "years of divestment."

  What are they referring to there?

• Rebecca Dell:

  Yes, so I think that's a really exciting part of this.

  Often, the areas around industrial development experience a disproportionately high amount of air and water pollution that harms the local population. Also, as many Americans know, we have had significant deindustrialization in many parts of the United States in recent decades.

  And so, for both of those reasons, DOE really wants to make sure that the communities that host these projects are the communities that were impacted by that health harm and pollution and those job losses, and so those communities really benefit from a healthier environment and the tens of thousands of jobs or more that are going to come from these

• William Brangham:

  All right, Rebecca Dell of the ClimateWorks Foundation, thank you so much for talking with us.

• Rebecca Dell:

  Thank you so much for having me.