Starting in July 2023, and set to driving steel guitar music, it shows the transformation of a decades old Rust Belt industrial site into a factory focussed firmly on the future.
The video shows the new factory set up by Form Energy in Weirton, West Virginia, on the banks of the Ohio river. It hopes to export its tech around the world, including to the power grid in Britain.
The scene is a stark contrast to footage I shot on a reporting trip there almost ten years ago.
It was no surprise the city was selected as a location by Michael Cimino, director of the 1978 film The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep.
It once symbolised the slow death of America’s steel industry, ravaged by cheaper imports from countries like Japan and Brazil. But locals say there is a new sense of hope.
Form Energy’s first high-volume manufacturing facility in Weirton, West Virginia (Photo: Form Energy)Harris believes the city of 20,000 people can have a bright future yet. “I’m an eternal optimist,” he told The i Paper.
The site, selected from 500 potential US locations, hopes to expand rapidly and employ 750 people by 2028.
“As a historic steel community, Weirton has the local infrastructure – direct river, railway, and hardened highway access – and local know-how around how to make great things out of iron.”
Global ambition
The batteries can store power for up to 100 hours and are meant for power utilities that require long duration energy storage, or LDES. Its first customer is Great River Energy, based in Cambridge, Minnesota.
Earlier this year Ofgem, the UK energy regulator, confirmed an investment support scheme it hopes could unlock large sums in funding for projects. It has invited companies to bid for projects.
The factory floor at Form Energy’s facility in Weirton (Photo: Form Energy)
“[It] can also help reduce costs for consumers through reducing their bills and by avoiding the need for expensive electricity grid upgrades.”
Weirton’s battery plant received bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats.
Biden spent billions of dollars to support infrastructure and green energy as part of his signature Inflation Reduction Act.
He said the “historic city is looking toward the future, and it’s very bright”.
Donald Trump speaks alongside coal and energy workers while announcing an executive order meant to revitalise the US coal industry (Getty Images)West Virginia was once a Democratic stronghold, but that declined, in part as traditional union jobs disappeared.
Weirton straddles two West Virginia counties, Hancock and Brooke.
In 2024, with Trump up against Kamala Harris, the margin was even greater.
Trump frequently boasted his would “be the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA”
Leaving fossil fuels in the past
In March he imposed 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports, the first of a series of sweeping levies that targeted almost every country in the world and sparked economic turmoil the world over.
West Virginia is represented in Congress entirely by Republicans after Manchin retired and his seat turned red in November, taken by Jim Justice, the former governor.
Weirton is seeking to attract other employers and even pitch itself as a commuter town for people who the next state over in Pittsburgh and could avoid its higher taxes.
Brittany Holloway, 33, a Republican, is serving her first term on Weirton’s City Council. Her husband served in the Marines and they have three children.
“My father was a steel worker, my grandfather was a steel worker,” she said by phone after picking up her children.
Olivia Dowler, 23, is also fighting to ensure Weirton has a bright future.
Democrat Olivia Dowler says Weirton must honour city’s industrial history but look to the future (Photo: Courtesy Olivia Dowler)
Dowler said it is correct for Weirton to honour its past, but it must also “look towards the future, and we can’t be afraid to do that, even if it means pulling away from things like fossil fuels”.
“If we don’t turn to that future, then it’s just going to continue. We’re going to continue to lose our lose young people [despite] there being so much magic here,” she said.
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