In a statement, Nucor said the first step is for the companies to issue a request for investment for potential projects in need of offtake. 

“Advanced clean electricity technologies face challenges, in part because the novelty and risk of early projects make it difficult to secure the financing they need,” Nucor said in a statement. “By developing new commercial structures and aggregating demand from three of the world's largest energy buyers, this approach aims to reduce the risks for utilities and developers considering early commercial projects and enable the investments that are needed — ultimately helping to bring these projects on-line by the early 2030s and reducing technology costs through repeated deployment.”

Nucor said that through the effort, the companies hope to sign offtake agreements for technologies that are still early on the cost curve, bring a clear customer voice to policymakers and other stakeholders on broader long-term ecosystem improvements, and develop new enabling tariff structures in partnership with energy providers and utilities.

“In addition to supporting innovative technologies that can help decarbonize electricity systems worldwide, this demand aggregation model will bring clear benefits to large energy buyers. Pooling demand enables buyers to offtake larger volumes of carbon-free electricity from a portfolio of plants, reducing project-specific development risk, and enables procurement efficiencies and shared learnings,” Nucor said.