{"id":7484,"date":"2019-06-04T07:13:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T07:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7484"},"modified":"2019-06-04T07:13:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T07:13:16","slug":"the-price-of-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/06\/04\/the-price-of-steel\/","title":{"rendered":"The price of steel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I write this, no coal is being used in a UK power station to generate electricity, and it has been this way for a while now. \u00a0Indeed, <em>zero-coal<\/em> records have been set, and if plans come to fruition, the UK's\u00a0last coal-fired power plant will shut by 2025. \u00a0Few will mourn; see <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/assets.publishing.service.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/604695\/Press_Notice_March_2017.pdf\">this<\/a><\/strong> for an overview of how energy use has changed recently, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/statistics\/solid-fuels-and-derived-gases-section-2-energy-trends\"><strong>this<\/strong><\/a> for some coal-use stats for 2017 \/ 2018.<\/p>\n<p>This is unlikely to end coal use in the UK as it is needed for steel making, brick production, cement manufacture and other heavy industries. \u00a0An article in The Times recently argued that\u00a0coal demand by UK industry will remain around five million tonnes a year \u2013 unless, that is, we find a way of making steel without the use of coking coal which would probably need a miracle of alchemy rather than chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>Blast furnaces need 0.77 tonnes of coking coal to make 1 tonne of crude steel [*] and around 250 tonnes of steel are needed for one offshore wind turbine, and there are many other\u00a0low-carbon technologies that need steel \u2013 for example, electric cars.<\/p>\n<p>The Times article asked: shall we mine our own coal (we have plenty of it) or import it (it might be cheaper unless you count the externalities). \u00a0The same question arises for steel especially today with existential questions hovering over British Steel. \u00a0Shall we just let other countries do all the dirty stuff, reap the carbon reduction benefits, and then tell everyone how good we are?<\/p>\n<p>..............................<\/p>\n<p><strong>[*]\u00a0<\/strong>See <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldcoal.org\/coal\/uses-coal\/how-steel-produced\">this<\/a><\/strong> for details of steel-making, including the use of coal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I write this, no coal is being used in a UK power station to generate electricity, and it has been this way for a while now. \u00a0Indeed, zero-coal records have been set, and if plans come to fruition, the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}