Consider the misguided environmental policies that the British government is currently pursuing.
Labour promised to kickstart a green revolution when it came to power in July. Great British Energy, a state-owned enterprise, was set up to finance renewable energy sources as part of Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030. The government wants to shift away from reliance on fossil fuel. At the same time, they want to reassure the industry that—as with the phase-out of coal—the shift to clean sources of power will not put jobs at risk.
Starmer ought to share his utopian vision with people who work in the steel sector in South Wales. They are not convinced.
The United Kingdom’s steel industry was once the envy of the world. It is now in terminal decline. The collapse of the Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales, along with closing the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, means Britain will be the only advanced nation without the ability to make high-quality ‘virgin’ steel—due primarily to a series of misguided environmental policies.
Tata Steel, the Indian conglomerate that took over ownership of the Port Talbot plant in 2007, is closing the site so it can remove its two coal-fired blast furnaces. The company is replacing them with electric-powered furnaces that emit less carbon dioxide in order to comply with net-zero targets. The first blast furnace has gone, and the second is scheduled to go at the end of September. When the plant reopens in 2028, it will mean fewer specialised staff are required, resulting in the loss of roughly 2,500 jobs.
Following the agreement made under the previous Conservative government, Labour are providing £500m of public money for the Port Talbot retrofitting. This will help Tata cover the £1.25bn cost it predicts for switching to electric furnaces. Essentially, the corporation is receiving government subsidies to lay off employees, a decision that has infuriated union leaders.
Alasdair McDiarmid, Assistant General Secretary of Community, a union representing steel workers, described the decision as “short-sighted,” “absolutely devastating,” and one that would cause “irreparable damage to the UK’s steelmaking capability.”
On net zero, Labour has adopted the same strategy as the Conservatives, rather than standing up for the interests of the working class. Devolution has meant that environmental policy is now set by the Welsh Labour-controlled Welsh government. In 2016, the devolved administration established a non-binding target to reduce carbon emissions by three per cent annually. If projections come true, the new electric furnaces will lead to a significant decrease in emissions in Wales—roughly 15 per cent, with a corresponding decrease in the UK’s overall emissions of roughly 1.5 per cent.
To create steel, a crude iron known as “pig iron” is required. Pig iron is produced by extracting iron from iron ore. In order to do this, a reducing agent is required. This reacts with heat to remove oxygen from the iron ore. To produce high-quality steel, the primary agent involved in this reaction is coal. With the shift away from coking coal, high-quality steel will not be produced in Port Talbot using electric furnaces.
That is not the only problem.
Should the electric arc furnaces result in a decline in carbon emissions in the UK, it would only raise them in other countries such as China.
China produces two-thirds of the world’s pig iron, which is needed to create high-quality steel. It would mean that the UK would need to import more steel. When you consider the carbon intensity of Chinese electricity—61 per cent of which is generated by coal-powered stations—we are essentially outsourcing our emissions.
In 2019, China was responsible for 27 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—more than the entire First World combined. With over 1,000 operational coal power plants, it shows no sign of change. China’s CO2 emissions have increased 10 per cent between 2019 and 2023, essentially undoing the gains we have made in the opposite direction. One startling statistic is that China released 83bn metric tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2014 and 2021, compared to 79bn between 1750 and 2021, which is more than the United Kingdom has released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Tata was given the subsidy in order to offset the high cost of renewables. In countries like France and Germany, where industrial electricity costs are about half as expensive, British industry just cannot compete. Reopening coal mines would provide the grid with affordable, dependable power once more. However, plans to open a coal mine in Cumbria were recently scrapped due to “net zero” concerns. The plant in Whitehaven would have produced high-grade coal suitable for steelmaking in the UK. Nuclear power plants cannot come online quickly enough—four of the five currently operating nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom are set to close in 2028. While renewable energy cannot be stored due to its exorbitant cost, coal can.
All the major British political parties are ideologically committed to net zero, regardless of the cost in terms of economic growth, jobs, or energy security. The de-growth radicalism of the Green doctrine, which rejects the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power, has been dubbed “bourgeois environmentalism” by Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB trade union.
It is a little ironic that Labour, a party founded to defend working-class interests, is now pushing to demolish the industry that was so vital to the start of the industrial revolution. The pursuit of net zero is destroying British industry. Decarbonisation and deindustrialisation are synonymous concepts. Manufacturing accounted for 25 per cent of GDP fifty years ago. Today, it accounts for around nine per cent.
The majority of Britons want to live in a clean environment. Only fools want to live on a smoggy, polluted planet. However, it should not come at the cost of ideological fanaticism, and it definitely should not come at the expense of the security and prosperity that the industrial revolution brought us.
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