Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said Monday he had a plan to buy U.S. Steel as he launched a tirade against Japan, calling the close U.S. ally “evil” during a press conference.
“I want to buy,” Goncalves told journalists at the Butler works plant in Pennsylvania. “I have a plan, I have an all-American solution in place. The all-American solution centers on people, on workers.”
Goncalves comments came after CNBC reported earlier Monday that Cleveland-Cliffs is partnering with Nucor in a potential bid for U.S. Steel. Cleveland-Cliffs is angling for U.S. Steel after President Joe Bidenblocked the company’s sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel earlier this month, citing national security concerns.
Talk of a potential offer drove both U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs shares higher in trading on Monday, with shares closing up about 6% each. Nucor shares ended the day up 4%.
Goncalves launched a tirade against Japan during a press conference that ran more than 90 minutes and which was ostensibly held to mark the five-year anniversary of Cleveland-Cliffs acquisition of AK Steel.
The Cleveland Cliffs CEO attacked Japan as “evil,” claiming that the U.S. ally had taught China how to dump steel on the U.S. market.
“Japan is evil. Japan taught China a lot of things,” Goncalves said. “Japan taught China how to dump, how to have overcapacity, how to overproduce.”
The CEO criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for expressing concern to Biden about the decision to block Nippon’s acquisition of U.S. Steel. Goncalves challenged Ishiba to bring the same concerns to the White House when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
“Japan beware,” Goncalves said. “You don’t understand who you are. You did not learn anything since 1945. You did not learn how good we are, how gracious we are, how magnanimous we are, how forgiving we are.”
U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have sued Goncalves, Cleveland-Cliffs, and United Steelworkers President David McCall in federal court, alleging that they coordinated actions to prevent the deal from taking place.
Goncalves has dismissed the lawsuit as a “shameless effort to scapegoat others for U.S. Steel’s and Nippon Steel’s self-inflicted disaster.”
Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
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The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
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Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
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The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
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