Steel workers facing job losses under £500 million Net Zero subsidy plan
By Paul Homewood
Thousands of workers at Britain’s biggest steel mill are facing redundancy under a taxpayer-funded net zero plan.
Tata Steel will be given £500m of taxpayer cash to fund its switch to net zero at its Port Talbot steelworks.
The Indian conglomerate is expected to invest £1.25bn in retooling the site to produce “greener” steel, which ministers said will reduce the UK’s entire carbon emissions by around 1.5pc.
However, the new processes will require fewer jobs and Tata will consult on a restructuring that could lead to 3,000 redundancies
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The Unite union described the plans as a “disgrace” and vowed to fight them. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said it was a “devastating blow for workers at Port Talbot and the opposite of a just transition”
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Tata has been in talks with the Government for months about state aid to help switch the plant’s two coal-fired blast furnaces to electric arc versions that can run on zero-carbon electricity.
Full story
If electric arc furnaces were the most efficient way of making steel, Port Talbot would already be investing in them, without the need for subsidies.
The reality is that arc furnaces use huge amounts of electricity, and at current prices are not as economical as blast furnaces, particularly as the coke used in the latter process provides coke gas, which is used in other parts of the steel works.
There is a further issue – arc furnaces rely on steel scrap and pig iron. But there is only a limited supply of scrap, and the pig iron will have to be sourced from other steel mills, which use blast furnaces anyway. In other words there is only an illusion of emission cuts, the likelihood being that pig iron will simply be imported.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“….which ministers said will reduce the UK’s entire carbon emissions by around 1.5pc.”
By definition, reducing emissions is not what Net-zero is about. Net-zero requires negative emissions…taking out as much as has been put in. That’s not a workable plan when globally about 40 billion metric tons are being added annually.
Great! £1.25 billion + £500 million from the taxpayer in order to save:
1.5% of 1% of 3% of 0.04%.
The lunatics really have taken the asylum!
Yet not save Any jobs…
To the contrary, to lose, they say, 3,000 jobs.
The government is paying to make people redundant so they have to claim benefits and increase government spending.
You couldn’t make it up, except that these clowns have done.
Tata has already done well out of green scams. IIRC they sold carbon credits for around £1bn when closing down another part of the industry in the UK. Plus of course, Rishi probably negotiated this over breakfast while he was in India.
And not Govt money, taxpayers money!
Is it just a coincidence that the article highlighting Gary Smith’s attitudes to all this sort of thing is the one that went missing?
Also EAF using scrap cannot produce high quality primary steel. Sheffield Forgemasters can forget forging nuclear reactor heads from scrap.
Three thousand jobs lost…
I thought this green crap was supposed to create tens of thousands of new jobs…
Well, that fallacy didn’t take long to become obvious. I must admit I thought it would take much longer and the data buried quickly.
I think at one point the destruction rate was 3.4 real tax generating jobs going for every taxpayer subsidised green job.
And governments like have people on benefits, it develops their sense of beneficence to the proles.
I am not an expert in steel making, but my understanding is that electric arc is only used for scrap steel, and currently the UK has no such facilities, as they were too expensive to run with our green electricity. In fact we have to export all our scrap steel overseas.
Steel is made from Iron Oxide and the need for a carbon based fuel is to react with the oxide forming carbon dioxide and leaving some low grade iron, which is then purified in a blast furnace and the elements needed to make steel are added.
This plan is absolutely nuts. You have to be able to make steel from Iron ore, to make sure we have a secure supply, relying on Indian and Chinese companies is very foolish.
You are wrong
“In the UK, currently only around 20% of steel production is by electric arc furnace”
“Electric arc furnace slag comes from the two major electric arc furnaces of Celsa Steel in Cardiff, Liberty Speciality Steels in Rotherham
and to a lesser degree Outokumpu and Sheffield Forgemasters.”
That’s all reprocessing
If you want to make fresh steel , you need carbon cos it is a minor component of the iron, that you refine to make steel
and that fresh iron is made in blast furnaces
like in Scunthorpe
Yes, you’re correct, only good for processing scrap. Coal preferably is require to process from stock iron ore. Same thing happening here in NZ, taxpayers money going to subsidise NZ Steel to convert scrap smelters to electrical. Already been proven by experts that by the time the electricity required for this high-energy process there’s no CO2 saving. Virtual signalling……
The steel industry – yet another industry in which the UK was once a world leader. Thanks to a couple of generations of useless politicians we are now more like a third word country.
Remove Coal fired furnaces with Electric furnaces to reduce CO2.
Where does most of the electricity come from? Gas fired Power Stations which will produce more CO2 than the Coal fired furnaces used to.
Electric furnaces only melt old scrap steel. What happens if we run out of scrap steel? There will be no more new steel
Madness, doubled.
I’d have thought that this process would require reliable 24/7 electricity. Can’t see renewables providing that.
The verified news on BBC this a m when reporting this included an interview with the CEO of British Steel to substantiate their welcome for this thoroughly green development which he obligingly did in spades.
Neither he nor the interviewer advised us that the company was owned by the Chinese, the “British “ part of the name being an artefact conjured up by Westminster when our East coast steel works was abandoned by the Conservative government.
This mouthpiece went on to say that UK is overrun by scrap steel and that steel once made is indestructible and reusable ad infinitum!
So what stitch up was Rishi arranging in India with Tata, Modi and others last week?
Interfering in the current steel making process will only end disaster for the industry, the economy and for the people of South Wales . .
If, as are often told by the Government and the wind industry, offshore wind power is 9 times cheaper than hydrocarbon generated power, then why isn’t Port Talbot Steel Works building a wind farm for its power?
Or making the steel for use in wind farm towers and jackets? It comes from China instead.
Interfering in the current steel making process will only end in disaster for the industry, the economy and for the people of South Wales . .
European politicians don’t seem to care how much unemployment they cause with their “green” obsession.
But it seems at least one trade union has finally woken up and will fight back
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. Some carbon content is essential for the improved physical properties of steel compared to pure iron. The simplest and most economical route is to make iron of higher carbon content in a blast furnace, using iron oxide, coke and limesone, then burn some of the carbon content out, for example in a Bessemer converter or using oxygen. Hydrogen in steel is a recipe for disaster, as it embrittles it.
I voted Libertarian. My vote was against that.
The only net zero I recognize is the intellect of politicians. For the first time in history, this applies to all parties.
Never fear there will be steelworks somewhere else in the world that will continue to spew out CO2 to make steel we need and then put it on a CO2 spewing ship to transport it across the world. I despair when will these people get that us being net zero will make naff all difference in the grander scheme of things.
Mother Nature, but politicians, particularly European ones, are delusional that they can control natural causes by inventing taxes, regulations and bans and also by picking winners and losers in the market.
>>grander scheme of things
Does not the famous department also include security of supply for the UK. As several people have noted, this policy madness puts the UK even further under the control of foreign powers for decent quality steels. The USA have policies that protect US industries from security threats, why not the UK: we first closed our carbon steel tube industry to please the EU and imported steel products from Europe that we should have made in the UK. Now welcome …… CHINA!
The media and Govt are all saying that Port Talbot will switch from making steel using blast furnaces to making it with electric arc furnaces.
This is throughly misleading – EAFs do not make steel, they merely recycle existing scrap steel. The ONLY way to make steel from iron ore is to use a blast furnaces, which of course China, India and others will continue to use to make the steel we will have to import.