Electra, a Colorado-based startup backed by Amazon and Bill Gates’s clean-tech venture firm, aims to build a $910 million iron factory in Canada it says will bolster the country’s domestic supply chain and slash emissions from its steel mills.

The plant would create hundreds of jobs and provide iron to Canadian steelmakers, battery manufacturers and automakers, Electra said in a pre-budget consultation submission to the House of Commons finance committee. In addition to Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backers of the project include Rio Tinto, BHP Ventures and a Toyota subsidiary, Toyota Tsusho, the document said. 

The submission, dated Aug. 1, does not disclose where the facility might be located. Electra has been lobbying Quebec and Ontario-based MPs, along with officials in the federal innovation and natural resources ministries. It has also reached out to provincial governments: lobbying records in Quebec indicate that the company is looking to secure energy for its factory.

Electra did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its submission. (The company is separate from and unrelated to Electra Battery Materials, a cobalt refiner based in Toronto.)

Its proposal comes, though, after the U.S. hiked tariffs to encourage domestic steelmaking, while trimming tax credits for clean energy projects. In its submission, Electra urged Canada to consider making its technology eligible for this country’s Clean Technology Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit, saying the facility would also provide iron for wind and solar energy projects. 

Electra raised a US$186-million Series B round in April to build a Colorado demonstration plant, with the goal to build its first commercial plant by the end of the decade. 

The rush of venture funding comes as manufacturers try to cut back on emissions-intensive, high-heat smelting. Last month, Glencore purchased struggling Canadian company Li-Cycle, which invented a way to recover metals from spent batteries with less heat. Steel company Algoma intends to transition to electric arc furnaces, which can heat up and cool down quickly instead of being left running at high temperatures for long periods. 

Rather than relying on coke ovens and blast furnaces, Electra dissolves iron in acid and runs electricity through the solution to deposit iron onto metal sheets. The near-pure iron its lower-heat process produces can be used by steelmakers, along with useful byproducts like silica, alumina and phosphorus, the company says.

Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly has promised to support Canada’s steel industry in the face of U.S. tariffs—among other ways, by requiring that major domestic manufacturers like Volkswagen use Canadian-made metal. Meanwhile, Algoma Steel borrowed half a billion dollars from federal and provincial lenders on Monday to soften the blow of the 50 per cent U.S. tariffs, as the Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., firm spends about $987 million to upgrade its electric arc furnaces. 

Electra’s request to join federal incentive programs is one of nearly 950 submitted to the House of Commons finance committee so far. Companies are jockeying for some of the selective investment Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised even as he warned of “austerity” measures in the fall budget. Neither Joly’s office nor MPs contacted by Electra responded to questions about the status of the project by deadline on Monday. 

“This would send a clear, powerful signal to global investors,” Electra wrote in its submission. “Canada is the premier destination for clean manufacturing and next-generation steel production.”