On a drizzly March morning in 2025, South Korean industrial giant Hyundai staged a high-profile announcement at the White House, flanked by then-President Donald Trump, top Republican leaders, and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry. The company revealed it would pour nearly $6 billion into a cutting-edge new steel mill in Louisiana, built to supply domestic metal for its existing vehicle factories in Alabama and Georgia. Trump framed the investment as a direct win for his administration’s trade tariff policies, while Hyundai executives touted the thousands of new jobs the facility would bring to the Bayou State. What the event omitted, however, was a far more transformative detail: this mill could become the lowest-carbon iron and steel production facility the United States has ever constructed.
Steelmaking is one of the global economy’s most carbon-intensive sectors, responsible for roughly 9 percent of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike the coal-fueled blast furnaces that built America’s 19th-century steel industry—many of which still operate across the Midwest today—Hyundai’s planned Ascension Parish facility is not designed to run on coal. Last summer, company leaders told Louisiana officials the plant will eventually run on hydrogen, a carbon-free fuel that can be produced entirely from renewable electricity and water. Executives described the project as a potential “catalyst for the hydrogen ecosystem” across the Gulf South, while helping Hyundai meet rising global demand for sustainably manufactured steel.
This development marks a rare bright spot for U.S. steel decarbonization, a movement that has stalled in recent years amid economic headwinds and federal policy rollbacks. Under the previous Biden administration, two major U.S. steel firms, SSAB and Cleveland-Cliffs, were set to receive $500 million each in federal funding to develop hydrogen-powered steel production. Both projects were ultimately scrapped.
Kelvin Wells Jr., an industrial organizer with the Sierra Club’s Delta Chapter based in Baton Rouge, called the project an opportunity to redefine Louisiana’s industrial identity and accelerate the state’s clean energy transition. But despite that promise, critical questions remain unanswered: whether Hyundai will actually deliver on its hydrogen decarbonization pledges remains far from certain.
According to the company’s permit filings, Hyundai will launch operations in 2029 running primarily on natural gas, a plan Hyundai confirmed publicly to Canary Media. The company says it will capture and store all carbon dioxide produced during initial operations, a process that cuts coal-based steel emissions by roughly two-thirds—but still generates far more pollution than steel produced with green hydrogen from renewables, and faces intense pushback from carbon capture critics. When asked to set a timeline for a full transition to green hydrogen, a Hyundai representative noted, “It is difficult to pinpoint when hydrogen will become economically viable.”
For local residents of Ascension Parish, where the mill is being built on the grounds of a former sugarcane plantation, uncertainty around the project extends far beyond hydrogen plans. The region sits along Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley,” a stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans already saturated with petrochemical facilities and oil refineries that have driven disproportionately high rates of chronic illness and pollution in low-income and Black communities. Locals hope the new steel mill will deliver tangible benefits instead of repeating the harms of past industrial development, but say Hyundai has yet to respond to their repeated requests for community engagement.
The project’s closest major population center is Donaldsonville, a town of 7,000 that boasts a historic place in U.S. political history as the site of the nation’s first Black mayor, elected in 1868. Today, the parish has one of the highest poverty rates in Louisiana, despite decades of industrial development in the region. Glenn Price, who leads a local neighborhood organization and is a member of grassroots coalition Good Neighbors Louisiana, says he is skeptical the project will deliver quality local jobs. Past industrial facilities in the area have prioritized hiring out-of-state workers, he notes, and Hyundai has a documented record of labor and safety violations at its U.S. auto plants. Price also worries the mill will add to the region’s already unbearable pollution burden, bringing no meaningful improvement to public health.
Good Neighbors Louisiana is pushing Hyundai to codify its pledges on pollution reduction, green hydrogen transition, and worker protections into a legally binding community benefits agreement, and is calling on the state to conduct a full environmental justice analysis before approving final permits. Recently, the group won a small early victory: Hyundai agreed to convert nine gas-fired process heaters to cleaner electric equipment, a change the company says will reduce harmful pollutant emissions.
“We can’t stop industrial development from coming here—we don’t have that power,” Price explained during an interview at Donaldsonville’s public library. “If they’re coming in, we just want them to make solid commitments to our community. We’re fighting to get the best outcome we can.”
The 1,700-acre Hyundai site sits at the core of a proposed 17,000-acre industrial mega-hub called RiverPlex MegaPark, developed jointly by Hyundai, CF Industries, and other major energy firms. The project would expand industrial development into rural farmland currently owned by descendants of formerly enslaved people and sharecroppers, sparking fears of displacement among long-time local residents.
To speed up negotiations for the project, at least 10 local elected officials in Ascension Parish have signed non-disclosure agreements with Louisiana Economic Development, the state’s economic development agency, enabling officials to privately negotiate a $2.6 billion incentive package for Hyundai. This level of secrecy has become standard under Governor Landry’s administration, but local environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to block the practice. A spokesperson for Louisiana Economic Development defended NDAs as a “standard part of economic development projects” across the country, arguing that “by engaging local elected officials early while protecting sensitive business information during negotiations, Louisiana is able to compete for transformational projects that create opportunity, grow wages and strengthen communities across the state.”
Local resident Ashley Gaignard, president of Rural Roots Louisiana, questions why details that are supposed to serve the public good must be kept hidden. “I want to see my community thrive,” she said. “I just don’t want to do it at the cost of risking our water, our air, our lives.”
Not all local residents are opposed, however. Deletrick Dickerson, a safety representative for the United Steelworkers union who lives in Ascension Parish and works at a nearby alumina refinery, says the project could deliver transformative benefits if it prioritizes hiring local workers from the region’s majority-Black, economically disadvantaged river communities. “We just want everything to be open and honest,” he said.
In a written statement to Canary Media, Hyundai-Posco Louisiana Steel, the U.S.-based subsidiary leading the project, addressed community concerns directly. The company says it is using “advanced technologies to minimize emissions of harmful and toxic substances,” that the project “is designed to comply with all applicable environmental regulations and permit requirements,” that it will “prioritize hiring local residents to the greatest extent possible,” and that “safety will be our top priority.”
Unlike traditional coal-fired U.S. steel mills, Hyundai’s Louisiana facility will combine two lower-carbon production technologies into one operation: a direct reduction furnace to process raw iron ore, which can run on natural gas, hydrogen, or a mix of the two, and two electric arc furnaces to produce finished steel. Only three direct reduction facilities currently operate in the U.S., all running on natural gas, including a large Nucor operation just across the Mississippi River from Hyundai’s site. Electric arc furnaces are already common across the U.S., but most rely on recycled scrap metal to produce steel; Hyundai will use its own domestically produced direct reduced iron to manufacture high-grade steel suitable for vehicle production.
The project is a direct response to trade policy shifts: Trump administration steel tariffs raised costs for imported steel, pushing Hyundai to bring more of its supply chain to the U.S. Building a new coal-fired blast furnace makes no economic or environmental sense today, so the company opted for a flexible new design that can adapt to future decarbonization. Hyundai also plans to sell its low-carbon Louisiana steel to other automakers, as growing global policy pressure—including the European Union’s carbon border adjustment tax—and consumer demand increase the market for sustainably produced steel, while Hyundai itself must meet South Korea’s national carbon neutrality targets.
“This project is not just about producing steel — it’s about producing a better future,” Hyeongjin Kim of Hyundai Steel told Louisiana leaders last year.
In May 2026, Hyundai signed a $650 million contract with Italian industrial equipment manufacturer Danieli to supply the electric arc furnaces and direct reduction system for the plant. Andrea Diasparro, Danieli’s group sales director and executive board member, says the equipment is purpose-built to enable a seamless transition from natural gas to hydrogen. “No additional equipment has to be implemented for the plant to be hydrogen-ready, in the case that hydrogen is available at a reasonable price,” he explained. The system also includes built-in carbon capture technology, which Hyundai will use during its initial natural gas phase.
For climate advocates like Angelle Bradford Rosenberg, a medical scientist and leader of the Sierra Club’s Delta Chapter, the lack of a binding timeline for transition is a major red flag. “There’s no mechanism in Louisiana for watchdogging that sort of thing,” she said. “We need those commitments from corporations in the beginning, because we cannot trust that it will come later.” Good Neighbors Louisiana has repeatedly invited Hyundai representatives to attend public community events, she says, and has yet to receive a response.
Louisiana already produces millions of tons of conventional hydrogen annually for the chemical sector, made from natural gas in a carbon-intensive process. Industry plans to transition to lower-carbon hydrogen: so-called “blue hydrogen” is produced from natural gas with carbon capture and storage, while “green hydrogen” is made by splitting water with renewable-powered electrolyzers, producing no carbon emissions. Hyundai has indicated it plans to transition first to blue hydrogen, with a ready supply next door from CF Industries’ planned $4 billion blue ammonia facility, which will produce hydrogen and store emissions underground.
Opinions on blue hydrogen are deeply divided. Local environmental groups and even some Republican state policymakers oppose carbon capture and storage, citing concerns about underground injection risks, potential leakage, and the continued reliance on fossil fuels. But the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force, a leading climate advocacy organization, frames CCS-enabled blue hydrogen as a critical intermediate step to build out hydrogen infrastructure and drive down costs for future green hydrogen adoption. “We really see CCS-enabled hydrogen as a way to jump-start the economy and lead us into electrolytic [green] hydrogen in the future,” said Lindsay Cooper Phillips, senior Gulf Coast policy manager for the Clean Air Task Force. “It’s challenging for someone like Hyundai to just start off there.”
Green hydrogen, widely seen as the end goal for zero-carbon steelmaking, still faces major structural barriers in Louisiana and across the U.S. Global supplies remain limited, and production costs are still prohibitively high for large-scale industrial use. Political shifts have made the challenge even greater: the Trump administration has cut and paralyzed federal funding for new clean hydrogen projects, Governor Landry has stalled the low-carbon hydrogen policy initiatives launched by his Democratic predecessor, and Louisiana has barely begun to build out renewable energy generation capacity.
That makes Hyundai’s 2029 launch plan to start with natural gas unsurprising, if disappointing for decarbonization advocates. “The production of green hydrogen has not yet reached the scale, nor cost, necessary for feasible implementation to replace natural gas,” Hyundai wrote in its December 2025 permit application to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. The company says it will transition to green hydrogen once sufficient supply is available, but has not disclosed a public timeline.
Even as the hydrogen future remains uncertain, the region is already preparing for the mill’s arrival. Earlier this year, River Parishes Community College broke ground on a dedicated Hyundai Training Center in Donaldsonville, which will offer a two-year training program to prepare local workers for jobs at the mill. Korean investors have purchased hotels and residential property in downtown Donaldsonville to house new workers, and the first Korean-owned businesses have opened. Industrial gas supplier Air Liquide is investing $350 million to build a new air separation unit in nearby St. James Parish, which will supply purified oxygen to Hyundai’s electric arc furnaces by pipeline, and the facility is on track to launch in 2028. Air Liquide, one of the world’s largest hydrogen producers, says it stands ready to partner with Hyundai if the company moves forward with hydrogen adoption. “That could be another project for us tomorrow,” said Matthieu Giard, a group vice president for Air Liquide.
For a full transition to green hydrogen, however, Louisiana will need to build roughly three gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity, according to Clean Air Task Force estimates—more than the total amount of solar energy currently installed across the entire state. Today, natural gas power plants generate the vast majority of Louisiana’s electricity, with only a small contribution from nuclear power. Entergy Louisiana, Hyundai’s electricity provider, plans to add up to three gigawatts of solar capacity in coming years, and private developers are advancing plans for the state’s first three onshore wind farms. However, large-scale offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico has been effectively halted following policy rollbacks by the Trump administration.
If Hyundai delivers on its decarbonization pledges, the project could mark a turning point for the entire U.S. steel industry, paving the way for a full clean transition of one of the nation’s oldest and most polluting industrial sectors. For local advocates, that potential is what makes the fight for accountability so important. They remain torn between cautious hope for a cleaner, more prosperous future and deep skepticism that the project will deliver on its promises.
“The Hyundai plant is huge for the United States and for us,” Bradford Rosenberg said. “We want to make sure we get it right.”