Feb. 23—The national emphasis on developing renewable energy, responsible for a billion-dollar solar panel plant planned just west of Decatur, is now contributing to a planned Nucor manufacturing facility inside Decatur.

Nucor, which has a sheet steel mill on Red Hat Road, announced Wednesday it will build a $128 million plant for its Nucor Towers & Structures Inc. division next to the mill. The company said the plant will employ 200 workers within three years at an average salary of $75,000 per year, with construction beginning in July and production of steel monopoles beginning in October 2025.

Laurent De Mey, general manager of the Towers & Structures division, was in Decatur on Wednesday successfully applying for tax abatements from the Industrial Development Board.

"Most renewable energy is generated in the West and in the middle part of the country, the more sunny side of the country ... and it will also be generated offshore one day. All of that energy is not where people live. It all has to be transmitted to where people live," De Mey said.

The electricity is transmitted through power lines, and those lines are supported by poles such as those Nucor will make.

While power generation has historically been at sites close to population centers, limiting the need for extensive transmission lines, renewable energy sources typically are distant from the population centers that use the electricity. Climate and weather patterns generally dictate where wind and solar farms are placed. More land is also needed for these forms of renewable power, meaning they're generally located in rural areas far from where people will use it.

"The energy goes from energy generation to the end consumer," De Mey said of the transmission grid. "It goes from super high (structures supporting the power lines) to smaller and smaller and finally to the little pole that comes to your home. There are multiple types of poles in between in terms of size. We are producing everything from beginning to end except the very, very big ones — they are usually a different technology, usually angle iron — and the very small ones. Everything in between is steel monopoles."

He said the Decatur facility will manufacture galvanized poles no taller than 60 feet, so they can be shipped by truck, but two or three can be stacked by customers at the site where they are erected. Some of the steel in the monopoles is likely to come from Nucor's Decatur mill, De Mey said, but it also will come from other plants. — Electric vehicles

The increasing demand for electric vehicles is also driving demand for more transmission lines and therefore monopoles.

"All the energy that is in an oil barrel now needs to be transmitted in electrons," De Mey said. "How do you get that energy to your car if there's no gas? The energy is generated somewhere, and it has to be transmitted to a charging station for your car. These transmission poles will help to make this possible."

In addition to renewable energy, De Mey said national efforts to harden the electric grid and to replace aging energy infrastructure will increase demand for transmission poles.

De Mey said Nucor is not disclosing the square-footage of the new facility, but it will be on 90 acres of land now owned by Nucor in Mallard-Fox Creek Industrial Park. Industrial Development Board lawyer Barney Lovelace said Nucor is deeding the land to the IDB because a State Industrial Developmental Authority Industrial Development Grant can only be awarded to a public entity. The IDB will immediately lease it back to Nucor, and eventually will deed the property back to Nucor.

Nucor announced in December it would build two tower production plants, one in the Midwest and one in the Southeast. De Mey said the company considered several locations in the Southeast before deciding on Decatur.

"We feel welcome here. We have the steel plant here, and we feel there is a nice little synergy here between the state, the local community and what we already have here," De Mey said.

Lovelace told IDB board members he had not been sure Nucor would choose Decatur for the new facility.

"This was a very competitive project for us," he said. "At one point we didn't think we were going to get it."

Nucor said it is still evaluating potential sites in the Midwest for a second transmission tower production plant.

Jeremy Nails, president of the Morgan County Economic Development Association, said he expects renewable energy to be an increasingly important economic driver nationally and locally.

"It all goes back to the future of energy and the condition of our current infrastructure. Those are driving a lot of this investment that is going to carry us into the next decade. Just keeping up with the growth and the infrastructure that's going to be needed to maintain the electrical grid is critical," he said. "We are fortunate to have won this project."

Added Gov. Kay Ivey in a statement: "This investment is a big win for Nucor, Decatur and all of Alabama."

The Industrial Development Board on Wednesday unanimously voted to abate $3.94 million in noneducational property taxes over 10 years that would otherwise be due from Nucor to the city of Decatur, Morgan County and the state. The project will generate $4.85 million in school property taxes over the same period, according to Nucor, including $3.65 million for Decatur City Schools.

The IDB also agreed to abate noneducational Decatur sales and use taxes during the construction phase of $1.83 million. The project, according to Nucor, will generate $609,000 in educational sales and use taxes which will benefit the Decatur, Hartselle and Morgan County school systems.

An even larger project tied to renewable energy was announced in November, when First Solar committed to building a $1.1 billion plant just west of Decatur in Lawrence County's Mallard Fox West Industrial Park. Construction is expected to begin in June. Company officials said jobs will have an average hourly wage of $26.77 with production beginning by the end of 2025. The facility is expected to be 2.4 million square feet, or 55 acres.

Both the Nucor Towers and First Solar projects benefited from the federal Inflation Reduction Act, which took effect in August. In a statement Wednesday, Nucor said this legislation and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which took effect in November 2021, both will increase demand for its monopoles by providing "nearly half a trillion dollars in funding and incentives to build out our clean energy future."

Nucor formed its Towers & Structures division after its June acquisition of Pennsylvania-based Summit Utility Structures, which had a customer base in eastern Pennsylvania. De Mey said the Decatur plant will further Nucor's goal of creating a national customer base for its transmission poles.

Nucor has had a presence in Decatur since 2002, when it acquired bankrupt Trico Steel and refurbished its Decatur plant. Nucor employs 725 workers at its Decatur steel mill.

— eric@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2435. Twitter @DD_Fleischauer.