A core part of our company ethos and approach to sustainable business is to be a great neighbor and responsible steward of the community.
We have chosen to site our first factory on the former Weirton Steel facility, a dormant brownfield location that has been in need of redevelopment for decades. By building  on a brownfield site, we avoid disrupting or eliminating an existing natural ecosystem, which would happen with a greenfield construction.  Constructing a new advanced manufacturing facility and creating jobs meets the goals of the West Virginia Voluntary Remediation Program and US EPA Corrective Action programs for the site, a process that began in the late 1980s with environmental site characterization remediation activities.
The active components of our iron-air battery system are some of the safest, cheapest, and most abundant materials on the planet — low-cost iron, water, and air.
Form Factory 1, along with our advanced manufacturing processes, are being designed with cutting edge sustainable engineering principles, including waste heat recovery, high rate water recycling, capture and reuse of byproducts and waste streams where possible to minimize the carbon emissions intensity of our product.
We expect Form Factory 1 to be classified as a minor emissions source for air emissions as we continue to refine our design of our advanced manufacturing processes and control technologies. We recently applied for an air permit with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) and expect stakeholder outreach meetings to be held before the end of the year as part of the standard permitting process.
All permits required by the City of Weirton, State of West Virginia and the U.S. EPA have been or will be obtained; we are striving to exceed all local, state and federal environmental regulations as part of Form Energy’s primary mission to help tackle climate change.