Labour In A Spin Over Green Steel Job Losses
By Paul Homewood
Port Talbot
One of the inevitabilities of life is how the Labour Party ties itself into knots over the contradictions of its own policies.
The news that the Port Talbot is likely to shed 3000 jobs as it transitions to “green steel”, as well as costing taxpayers £500 million, really should not come as a shock to Miliband and co, even given their low IQs.
Even so, it has.
Apparently in their own little dream world, you can uproot proven efficient technology, and replace it with expensive, less productive green technology, while at the same time saving money and creating loads of green jobs.
The Trades Unions are understandably furious, but at least they have been consistent in opposing the drive to Net Zero if it costs jobs.
As for the politicians though, take the son of Lord Kinnock of Brussels:
Does he not realise that Ed Miliband has been calling for arc furnaces to replace blast furnaces for years?
Electric Arc Furnaces (EAFs) rely mainly on scrap steel, which tends to be of highly unreliable provenance – in simple English, you have not got much idea what is in it!.
This does not, however, mean that EAFs cannot produce high quality steel. On the contrary. I worked in the 1970s at the brand new Stainless Steel Melting Shop in Sheffield, which used an EAF to produce alloy and stainless steels for the most demanding applications. EAFs are able to control steel specifications to a high degree, but first of all most of the scrap used needs to be of reasonable quality. (BTW – In drove past it again today, and it still brings back memories!)
Probably about half our scrap came from onsite operations, the rolling mills etc. We also used a lot of motor car bales, as a car is of a fairly well known property. And we also bought in stainless steel scrap, which by definition had to be of proven quality.
But somewhat surprisingly to some, we also used plenty of pig iron, as this too was uncontaminated.
Although there are already small EAF “mini-mills”in the UK, which are tailored to producing small batches of steel for specific orders, it is questionable whether there is enough high quality scrap in the UK to produce steel in bulk. Port Talbot, for instance, produces 3.3 million tonnes a year of steel strip.
A side issue is that EAFs produce much less steel than the blast furnace/BOS route. Port Talbot’s blast furnaces, for example produce 3.6 million tonnes a year of liquid iron. A typical EAF turns out maybe half a million tonnes a year.
Neither Tata or the government has stated how many EAFs will be built in this new investment, but I strongly suspect they will not replace all of its current output at Port Talbot.
This suspicion is reinforced by the fact that, according to the BBC, Tata’s workforce at Port Talbot is around 4000. Shutting down two blast furnaces certainly won’t save 3000 jobs, which leaves the logical conclusion that most of the job losses will come from the rest of the steelworks – ie rolling mills, finishing mills, and so on.
That inevitably points to a much lower level of steel production.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Decarbonise eh. More net zero tosh, he’s just ignorant, mind you he is following on from his father, the pension millionaire, who won’t be worried about losing the triple lock. Typical socialist ‘I’m alright Jack’ leftie.
Decarbonise? No, deindustrialise; trash and impoverish this, the country that brought the world the industrial revolution that gave us the health, wealth and longevity we currently enjoy, and others aspire to, is the true intention and it’s nothing to do with the climate.
The Brussels Sprout was the chap who, during a Covid lockdown, heroically drove all the way to London in the sole and noble cause of wishing his Pa a happy birthday.
We must all pray that the advanced technology known as a “telephone” reaches Wales soon.
Oh, I think there’s life down in Wales, you know. I was down there visiting an elderly aunt at the beginning of the month and a couple of her friends were calling Mark Drakeford all kinds of uncomplimentary names.
It was deliberate policy under the Net Zero insanity to destroy the steel industry .https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/26/britains-steel-industry-hammered-climate-change-taxes/
News report from over a year ago about how it was being taxed out of business .
And to actually produce steel requires coal being burnt with iron ore .
So it is all just more lies being put out to cover up their deliberate policy of making the country bankrupt .
Why does anyone listen to these wreckers?
Corruption must explain a lot,even if they and the MPs are all rich.
The “Tories” are just as bad as the labourites and the batty Greens.
In 18th century France, in revolution, they knew how to deal with “leaders” like “Lord” Gummer Deben and Ed Milipede.
May be the laws of high treason could help the normal people to get the justified punishment.
As a sign of humanity, those certified as insane would be pardoned but being corrupted or a Russian agent is no excuse at all.
It’s possible to produce steel using hydrogen as the reducing agent rather than carbon from coal. Qatar does this because they’ve got massive natural gas reserves they can produce hydrogen from (presumably without carbon capture) fairly cheaply.
Using hydrogen to produce steel is the same as any other “green” technology such as wind power EVs etc. If it was cheap, efficient and produced something people wanted then the free market would result in the technology becoming widespread. As soon as subsidies become involved it’s a sure fire sign that the technology is inferior.
Making hydrogen from natural gas produces as much carbon dioxide as if you burned the gas plus half of the energy.
Hybrit in Sweden has produced 100 tonnes of steel using hydrogen and is in the process of ramping up to 1.3m tonnes. The process is 30% more expensive than current methods.Others are also going down this route but it will be a long, long time before they will be manufacturing the 1.951bn tonnes of steel produced in 2021, (up from189mt in 1950 and 850mt in 2000) if ever.
Dave Andrews mentions Sweden’s steel production using hydrogen in his reply. Sweden produces over half of its electricity via hydro and much of the rest by nuclear and so can produce hydrogen cheaply via electrolysis for this experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden
The purpose of Net Zero is allied with the Great Reset – to make us all serfs.
“And to actually produce steel requires coal being burnt with iron ore”
Which will now come from Tata Steel India…
The steel industry is a far-flung, international affair with suppliers and smelters of raw materials around the Globe. I made a bunch of money years ago on dividends from, trading stock in a firm named Arcelor Matal, based in India. There annual reports read like a modern crime novel. They were under investigation on five continents at one time, and were a ruthless, unprincipled bunch. At the rick of sounding hackneyed and trite, the Steel industry “…is not that simple.” Are those pasty-faced white boys of Britain up to the fight?
Oops: I meant the perpetrators, not the long suffering normalpeople, deserve the severest punishment
All trade unions have always supported Marxist policies–it is their nature. What the UK steel workers, and the UAW workers currently striking the so-called American Big Three do not realize is they are fully expendable, a mere means to an end. Won’t nobody be making steel or autos in shuttered plants, unless they use their strike funds to buy these failed concerns out of bankruptcy–but what would they do with them?
A country beholden to others for the steel in the range of quality and alloys required by its domestic and export market is a hostage to every other industrial country and producer. Steel is a strategic resource and it does no harm to have your own supply of coking coal.
Has the lesson recently learnt by Angela Merkel regarding gas supplies not been apparent to our government and why are our ‘leaders of industry’ so reticent about highlighting the complacency of the experts in the Dept of Trade and Industry or whatever is its present incarnation?
Same folly all too evident in our own fuel industries.
As Andrew Doyle might say the New Puritans of the Net Zero movement compromise our whole way of life and immiserate our children on the way.
Apples and pears. Steel is widely available from numerous countries. A gas pipeline ties you to the country at the end if the pipeline. It is the pipeline that is the issue, not the gas – lots of countries have gas.
Sovereign steel production is the issue. Gas dependancy is a self inflicted folly.
Exactly. Some things are non negotiable for an independent country to function whilst being shock-proof to unexpected events.
Steel production is an essential asset, alongside energy, food, water and defence.
It seems to me that all of these components have been substantially weakened in recent years. I don’t believe it’s accidental.
Our political class has no excuse.
Most UK steel producers are owned by foreign companies except for Sheffield Forgemasters owned by the MOD.
Meanwhile the Chinese are making lots of cheap steel with cheap energy from coal.
And then making stuff and selling it to us
Steel is a global commodity. Like all of Net Zero madness, government giving Tata money to build a useless arc furnace, because it’s “green,” will produce nothing but a closed plant.
The market place isn’t interested in “green.”
Huh, no one listens to me ( Sob ) …. I , the people.
Led by Donkys
Gosh… So making production and trade a crime DOESN’T mean prosperity?
We can all see that achieving carbon net zero means shoving CO2 overseas. What the zealots won’t or cannot see is our energy and food security and much industry going with it (Cumbrian coke mine?) Oh, and a lot of our own money in subsidies and taxes to pay for it.
What about aviation? And agriculture ? And shipping? And dam great lorries? The stupid fools
All of this “Green” stuff reminds me of an old Goon Show joke :-
Colonel Blood knock – “Open your wallet and say after me” Help yourself””
Very clever was Spike Milligan
Plus a change……….
Recently I calculated that, according to the Climate Science, mankind was adding about 2 parts per million of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Given that the UK is said to contribute about 1% of that 2 parts per million and also that the Government claims that the ‘greening’ of the Port Talbot Steel Plant will cut UK carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5% it is obviously money well spent in saving the Planet.
I repeat the point I made yesterday:
The objective is to spend £1.25 billion + in order to save 1.25% (or maybe it is 1.5%) of 1% of 3% of 0.04%.
Duh!
And will the climate notice?
“…saving the Planet.”
I am reminded of the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore sketch in which Cook as a senior RAF officer is telling an eager Moore:
“We have reached that stage in the war when a futile gesture is necessary. So I want you to get into your plane, fly over to Germany – and not come back!”
“Yes, Sir!!!”
The Left have never wanted to understand Economics as it would prevent them being on the Left. So they simply ignore the principles of wealth-creation and instead decide that doing the opposite creates wealth – because that’s what they want to do. Now what they want to do is Green, so they feel even more virtuous and destroy jobs and prosperity at twice the rate. But the Tories are also infected now and so do nothing.
Excellent point. I think of the left as children suffering arrested development. Even after their parents tell them”there is no Santy Claus–that’s Mom and Dad” they cling to the fond memories. I once heard it described as: If you are a conservative at the age of twenty you might be accused as heartless, but if you vote democrat after twenty-five you are proven to be brainless.
Agreed. Their mindset is quite adolescent.
Conspicuously so.
I’ve just read that Miliband said in parliament ‘the Govt have trashed offshore wind ‘the crown jewels’ of our energy supply’.
Totally deluded idiot.
Parliament is the place that protects the rights of uneducated fools to speak freely and honorably about things they don’t understand.
notify comments
As far as I can see so far nobody has pointed out the high cost of our electricity. Just look at Germany to see what high electricity costs do for your industry and their best solution is to use taxpayers cash to subsidise the costs.
We only produce one per cent of CO2 globally. Why wreck ourselves
CO2 and decarbonisation are respectively the wrong target and an ineffective and a ruinous means of influencing climate, locally or globally.
Manmade CO2 is of minimal moment.
Climate is basically under solar control-see Lightfoot and Ratzer, 2023, and their references.
They’ll get over it, They’ve just got to make sure that the conservatives take all of the blame.
You wouldn’t have been around these EAFs in Sheffield when, as an experiment, BSC loaded one up with stainless steel swarf from the strip finishing plant? It had been established that the swarf had a higher moly and nickel concentration than the original steel which made it sufficiently valuable to be worth recovering for that alone. Unfortunately there was also a lot of oil, inevitably, as that lubricated the abrasives used to polish the surface and the oil ignited and blew the lid of an EAF. Quite frightening as the loader’s cabin was close.
Net Zero is the destruction of ALL the fossil fuel economy, and not just the obvious bits, but including the bits that are necessary to produce all the “green” stuff … so even the green stuff disappears in their Net Zero “Utopia”.
No need to include “fossil fuel”, Net Zero is the destruction of the entire economy: Period.
“The issue is never the issue.”
What does ‘notify comments’ mean?
Completely new posts turn up in my e-mail automatically.
But the only way to get notifications of comments is to post one of my own, for example “notify comments”.
There really ought to be a way to subscribe using an e-mail client so that all new posts and and any replies arrive automatically and of course post and reply from the e-mail client rather than starting a web browser.
>>what does ‘notify comments’ mean?
Port Talbot is some 15 miles from my house
I have been there a number of times
Many decades ago I nearly joined a machinist course in the skill centre there.
I have also had an interview there for a job as a software job , yet another interview that was not fruitful.
I have bought items in Port Talbot.
Occasionally the smell of rotten eggs from sulphur covers the area.
The steel works was nationalized in 1967 but was privatised by Thatcher in 1988. It was sold to a Dutch company that went bust with many steel workers losing there pensions. It relied on the coal from local mines. But when mines were closed the coal had to be imported. Now owned by Tata steel and Indian company. Other countries know how to support there vital industries.
But short term profit and trading speculators only know how to make money for them self. Until they close the square mile known as the city of London and its speculators and end the exclusive contract that King William the 3rd granted in 1693 to a group of rich individuals that still allow the exclusive right to create out of thin air printed money. Our industry and prosperity shall always be at the mercy of those that can grow or restrict the money supply and create booms and bust as a way to transfer the work and wealth to those who control the system.
All Fiat Monies and the associated financial trickery are eventually exposed as respectively worthless and idiotic. Look at what is happening in Turkey and Argentina, at this moment. Nothing special about Britain, or British institutions. Therefore, ‘cleaning up the City’ is not the answer.
‘Austrian’ economic analysis emphasises the distortions and investment* errors that result from the faulty ‘signals’ in markets forced to use fiat money, and from the baleful influence of the State, but, essentially, the analysis says that you can never go back and ‘quick fix’ the errors.’ Destruction of businesses and physical plant, in an agonizing purge, and a general reset, is necessary.
It is a fallacy that ‘money’ is created by the Government or the Banking system.
We , the people, collectively create it, by believing a rain-dance by men in suits has produced rain – magical invisible rain, of course.
* Real investment, not financial. A useless HS2, not the ‘finance’ for a useless HS2.