Investing in America: A New Iron Age

On Tuesday, August 13, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched a new video series spotlighting clean energy workers and the communities being transformed by historic clean energy investments.

The first video in this series, A New Iron Age, centers on Weirton, West Virginia, a historic steel town. After breaking ground in May 2023, Weirton will soon begin producing iron-air batteries to power homes and lower families’ energy bills.

The new facility is one of over 800 new or expanded clean energy manufacturing projects announced on American soil since the Biden-Harris Administration entered office.

Form Energy, in Weirton West Virginia, is already expanding after just opening its doors.

Form Energy announced the start of construction to expand Form Factory 1. Form Factory 1 is located on a 55-acre site where the Weirton Steel mill once stood.

The expansion will enable the company to scale up production, hire more employees, and deliver more breakthrough iron-air batteries to customers nationwide.

The Form Energy team anticipates completing the Form Factory 1 expansion project within a year – by the end of 2025. The team set similarly ambitious timelines when they set out to construct the initial factory space and achieved that goal this summer. To make that possible, Form Energy brought on hundreds of local construction workers, including many union laborers, and expects to do so again for the expansion effort.

Expansion construction has already begun, bringing Form Energy one step closer to having an annual production capacity of 500 megawatts and hiring at least 750 workers at Form Factory 1 by 2028: https://www.wtrf.com/west-virginia/new-west-virginia-factory-already-expanding-will-take-over-former-steel-mill/