The Net Zero music stops
Guest articles
31 Jan
Gwythian Prins
National security concerns must take precedence over the climate
There is a respectable peacetime economic case for closing the Port Talbot blast furnaces and ceasing production of basic oxygen steel (BOS) in the United Kingdom and it is set out by the leading trade economist Catherine McBride. She shows how much British steel-making of any type has declined by volume, and how chronically dependant what remains is upon imported raw materials. She also explains how much EAF – electric arc furnace – steel production from recycled scrap has increased worldwide: for example, 70% of American steel in 2022 came from that source. Finally, she shows how globally dominant China and India have become in BOS, as witness 90% of China’s 1 billion ton steel production in 2022. China and India have massive economies of scale, and also access to domestically controlled raw materials, giving end-to-end control: in the Chinese case, both coking coal and iron ore, and in the Indian case, iron ore but with need to import coking coal. In contrast, the UK currently has to import both ore and coking coal at scale to feed the condemned blast furnaces.
While neither of the Asian giants exports much primary steel – in the Chinese case, only 40 million of 1 billion tons produced – both are major suppliers of steel products. The UK buys more steel products from China than from anywhere else, and therein begin the problems. ‘While the UK doesn’t matter to China, China matters to us,’ McBride observes sharply.
There is an unrespectable case for closing the Port Talbot blast furnaces and replacing them with EAFs. It is the one which the government supports and, with a half billion pound bung, proposes to pay Tata Steel to effect: you can be sure that they wouldn’t do it otherwise. This is the claim of some contribution on the fantasy road to ‘Net Zero’ where the harder you try the more you fail.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/cancel-net-zero-return-coal
