What is Sundog? Sundog is a positive vision for northeastern Minnesota. It’s a 300-400 megawatt wind, solar, and storage concept sited at the old LTV Erie plant site and tailings basin. It’s a vision that would provide clean renewable energy for Minnesota’s Iron Range, sustain existing jobs, and provide an alternative that respects all the communities of the St. Louis River Watershed.
Instead of hundreds of years of water pollution and destruction of critical peatlands at the headwaters of the St. Louis River, we could turn this failed mine into a clean energy hub. Let’s start a conversation about how to revitalize the Iron Range and transform Minnesota’s taconite mining industry into a 21st Century clean, green steel industry.
What is the Sundog vision?
A Minnesota Miracle for the clean energy economy
We can create a new, carbon-free mining economy on the Iron Range. Let’s leverage the natural resources and innovative labor and leadership of northeastern Minnesota to create a project that transforms the Iron Range into a global leader in renewable energy, energy storage, and clean, carbon-free steel.
VISION
The LTV Erie plant site is the ideal place to build an integrated solar/storage/manufacturing facility that can power the next generation of an innovative natural resources economy in NE Minnesota. The existing brownfield land base, transmission infrastructure, and railroad connections provide abundant opportunity to re-imagine this site as a clean energy and clean manufacturing hub.
The global steel industry contributes 7% of greenhouse gas pollution worldwide. Minnesota can future-proof the iron ore industry by creating a domestic supply chain of clean, carbon-free steel, a value-added product that is in demand as the world transitions to a carbon-free economy. Carbon-free steel facilities are already being planned and built in Pueblo, Colorado and Sweden.
COMPONENTS
Build a 300–400 MW solar array and wind facility on the brownfield plant site and existing tailings basin, ideally using Minnesota-made solar panels manufactured by Heliene in Mountain Iron.
Build a battery storage facility, green hydrogen facility, and/or pumped hydro storage to supplement and smooth out power production. Ideally, use the iron-air battery approach being developed by Form Energy and being piloted in Cambridge, Minnesota, containing Minnesota-mined iron.
Use hydrogen and the carbon-free electricity (combined with existing solar, wind and hydroelectric power) to fuel a carbon-free Minnesota-made steel industry. With increasing demand for clean steel, including “Buy Clean” legislation introduced in Minnesota, this would be a value-added product that builds on investments by Cliffs and US Steel in direct reduced iron (DRI) plants at Minnesota mines.
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE?
An agreement to purchase the LTV Erie plant site from the current owners
An investment by the state and/or federal government to cleanup the pollution at the LTV Erie site and prepare site infrastructure
An investment into constructing and operating a solar facility, either by an existing utility or an independent operator
Production and construction incentives to ensure that Minnesota-made products, including solar panels, batteries, and construction materials, are used
Willing partners who want to build the next generation of an innovative natural resources economy on the Iron Range