Net Zero sends British steel at the helm of Scracy

Could this be the last nail in the coffin of the British steel industry? British Steel seems to close its last two stoves in June this year. The closure of Scunthorpe ovens, Lincolnshire, would mark the end of the British to produce steel from zero.

British steel had been expect a 1 billion grant of the British government, in order to switch to steel with low carbon content. But after almost two years, talks between Whitehall and Jingye, British Steels Chinese Company, collapsed last week. Jingye would have been proposed 500 million To help build low co-2 electric arc overalls (EAFS), but, with British Steel who has already losing somewhere around 700,000 a day since 2020, this agreement was not enough for Jingye. Continuing to exploit the ovens is no longer financially sustainable, he said.

Affairs Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said he could invoke the Civil events Act To nationalize British steel as quickly as possible and keep the scunning ovens being executed. If he does not do so, 2,700 jobs will be at risk, just as the Briton will be the ability to make new steel. The EAFs are perhaps more respectful of the environment, but they work by melting scrap steel, rather than producing virgin steel which is vital for industries such as defense, infrastructure and high-end manufacturing. Since Tata Steel also closed the Talbot Steelworks port for similar reasons last year, Great Britain could soon be completely unable to produce Virgin Steel.

How did we get to this? When a bankrupt British steel was sold in Jingye in 2020, then Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he had protected 3,200 highly qualified jobs in Scanthorpe, as well as Steel Mills in Skinningrove and Teesside. It was promised that 'Jingye Chinese Stef“Said the British steel industry.

It turns out that it was a pack of lies. These jobs are now in danger. And Jingye is not even an Acirial of Chinas. While the Chinese group Baowu, the world's largest, produced, produced 130 million tonnes of steel In 2023, Jingye was just Six million tonnes In combined steel and iron.

The work and its fixing on Net Zero must also assume responsibility for the ongoing death of British steel. It was the work, in 2023, that promised to invest in All technologies available in clean steel to make the United Kingdom a world leader in clean steel. In the same press release, opposition leader Keir Starmer is committed to locking steel that will make solar panels and wind turbines built to feed our homes for the coming years. It was completely delusional. Not only are solar panels and wind turbines not The response to our energy needs, but there are not also even British factories that are currently making solar panels.

Likewise, it was Jonathan ReynoldsIn February of this year, which said that the decarboning steel would never mean deindustrialisation, boasting of the British ''Peak research and development capacities“In the sector. But that is not true. Between 2021 and 2023, Tata, a leading investor in steel research and development, spent only 11 million per year for green steel research. It will take many more than millions (and many more years) for decarbonization to cause anything but deindustrialisation.

By making low carbon EAFs, the workforce has sealed the fate of British steel and the steel industry in general. It is true that the quality of EAFS steel production is improving, but Virgin Steel is always necessary for many manufacturing needs. Certain super stronger and super more used steel notes for tanks and by the Royal Navy require very low levels of impurity. Meanwhile, some specialized notes for civil applications require that carbon or nitrogen control is very precise. These constraints are easier to accomplish with high stoves using virgin iron ore than with the EAF.

Labors Clean Steel Wild Goose Chase presents additional problems at a time when the United Kingdom is supposed to reconstruct its military defenses. Like Robert Colvile, from the Center for Policy Studies, A put This, Great Britain can barely do steel, so additional weapons can be a section. The closure of the SCUTHORPE steels would also make the United Kingdom the only member of the G7 who is not able to produce his own steel Virgin.

The work is taken in a vice. The green transition to steel without fossil fuels will be, according to MCKINSEY management consultantsAn important challenge. Although EAFS can, in principle, be completely fueled by renewable energies, there is probably not enough difference [metal] To meet global demand. Two routes largely praised towards hot lighter iron in green steel and direct reduced iron will require green hydrogen, which is currently used anywhere on a large scale. However, McKinsey notes laconically, a lot of progress remains to be made with these technologies.

Although we were waiting for this very tuned progress, threats to national security and the blows to the economy already become thick and fast. The workforce may want to zero zero, but the protection of the British population and stimulating the standard of living will require many more CO2.

James Woudysen is a guest professor of forecasting and innovation at the London South Bank University. He tweets @jameswoudhuysen