You'll likely have read that Tata Steel is closing two blast furnaces in Port Talbot before it has built the taxpayer subsidised electric arc furnaces to replace them in 2027. By the end of the year there will be no longer any steel made in the UK from raw materials. An end to history. See here for the essential differences between the blast furnace and electric arc furnace.
What are we to make of this?
Well, it's good news for those who think that net zero matter more than jobs, community or industry. Less CO2 will be produced as a result, with the Welsh economy shoved hard towards its cherished target. And when oil refining finally ends at Grangemouth this year, there will be another shove so that the government can crow about how far it is going and how fast to meet international goals. Expect much bragging.
Tata says that Port Talbot is loss-making: around £1m a day – so it makes economic sense, to them, to close the furnaces despite the skilled industrial jobs that will be lost for ever (not their problem of course).
Tata might have tried to convert at least one of these furnaces to run on natural gas or on hydrogen as happens elsewhere thus keeping raw steel production going whilst reducing our carbon emissions. Or it might be intent on producing greener steel by direct reduction. NAEE has a good resource explaining how this happens and why it's important. Tata might have done all this a while back. The government, if it had an industrial / energy policy that was fit for purpose, might have been encouraging and facilitating it.
By contrast, the French government is funding ArcelorMittal – the Dunkirk Project – to link direct reduced iron with an EAF to transform iron ore using hydrogen instead of coal. Over here, I wonder how many ministers and civil servants have even heard of direct reduction and its 'green' potential.
I read that Port Talbot’s new electric arc furnaces will make ~90% of the site’s current production and will use some of the UK's 11 million tonnes of scrap steel a year, most of which, rather astonishingly, is currently exported. For an exploration of the scrap issue, and broader UK steel making, see this recent article in the Sunday Times.
Is this the cunning plan that masquerades as an industrial strategy? Reach net zero and never mind the social and industrial costs? I fear it might well be.
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