UK steel industry

[meltonblue]

It doesn't need to be tho. Having a UK steel industry has been considered to be of national importance by all governments until very recently circa 5 years ago. I've no idea why that has changed tbh. Perhaps brown envelopes changed hands ?? Shutting down our last blast furnaces means we will not be able to make steel. We will just be able to make inferior grade recycled steel. We will be the only country in the G20 unable to make its own steel! High grade steel is usually required to make ships and armaments. We will now be reliant on the importation of steel for our own arnaments industries.

The collapse of our steel industry is clearly the direct result of competition and import of steel from countries with much less stringent environmental controls and employment rights than in the UK aswell as low overheads.

TATAs Port Talbot Blast Furnaces are closing and we are the UK taxpayer are subsidising, to the tune of £500m, the construction of a smaller electric arc furnace in its place to recycle steel.

TATA meanwhile are building a new blast furnace in India. Presumably with help from the UK taxpayer money, after all it's essentially the same pot of money and same company.

How the closing of Port Talbot is being championed by anybody as a good result for the environment clearly doesnt stand up to scutiny when we will just end up importing the high grade blast furnace steel we need from other countries.

I believe it would be better if Tata were not susbisidised by the UK taxpayer but instead tariffs were brought in on all steel imports into the UK to level up the playing field. Therefore Tata would have a choice it either keeps and invests in Port Talbot blast furnaces or it let's that operation close and Port Talbot gets nationalised and carries on but with a level playing field.

I know we’ve spoken about it before but electric arc furnaces are capable of producing much higher grade steel they used to. I would have kept the blast furnaces open too though.

Good article here about it all -

Does it really matter if we can't produce "virgin steel" anymore?

In short, not half as much as people might have you believe. But that doesn't mean there aren't some real problems with Britain's plans to ditch all its blast furnaces.

edconway.substack.com

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

The whole green fiasco is pointless until the rest of the world joins in. I'm sick of paying thorugh the nose for all the "green" policies, rip off air zones, anti-polluting "road tax" etc etc. We actually share the air with countries like China and India and if the UK stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it won't take long at all until the CO2 we 'saved' is replaced by additional CO2 from other countries. The UK is NOT a "world leader" , we're a small country mugging it's population....

It boggles my mind that we have seen inflation balloon enormously pretty much entirely due to the price of fossil fuels and geopolitical issues related to them, which has left many struggling to pay their bills, and yet people think green policies are the problem.

Dependence on fossil fuels compromises the stability of our national economy and makes us dependent on imports (isn’t that what this whole thread’s supposed to be about?!)

Renewable energy infrastructure is a way of both preventing catastrophic and sudden price rises, while also achieving a more affordable net unit cost of electricity in the future. This isn’t virtue signalling, it is a simple economic reality that renewables are going to be far cheaper than fossil fuels the further into the future we go.

Executive summary – Renewables 2023 – Analysis - IEA

Renewables 2023 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

www.iea.org

Also your view on China is about two/three years out of date. They also realise that what I’ve stated above is true which is why they are by far the biggest investors in green energy projects in the world. In the first half of this year they added more renewable energy to their grid than the entire UK’s annual energy consumption. Their investment in solar energy projects is greater than the rest of the world combined. They have a lot of work to do but they are doing it.

This whole “oh well China isn’t doing anything” is not only a shit excuse, it is factually wrong.

 

[Really_here]

It boggles my mind that we have seen inflation balloon enormously pretty much entirely due to the price of fossil fuels and geopolitical issues related to them, which has left many struggling to pay their bills, and yet people think green policies are the problem.

Dependence on fossil fuels compromises the stability of our national economy and makes us dependent on imports (isn’t that what this whole thread’s supposed to be about?!)

Renewable energy infrastructure is a way of both preventing catastrophic and sudden price rises, while also achieving a more affordable net unit cost of electricity in the future. This isn’t virtue signalling, it is a simple economic reality that renewables are going to be far cheaper than fossil fuels the further into the future we go.

Executive summary – Renewables 2023 – Analysis - IEA

Renewables 2023 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

www.iea.org

Also your view on China is about two/three years out of date. They also realise that what I’ve stated above is true which is why they are by far the biggest investors in green energy projects in the world. In the first half of this year they added more renewable energy to their grid than the entire UK’s annual energy consumption. Their investment in solar energy projects is greater than the rest of the world combined. They have a lot of work to do but they are doing it.

This whole “oh well China isn’t doing anything” is not only a shit excuse, it is factually wrong.

China: CO2 Country Profile

China: How much CO2 does your country emit? Are emissions falling? How does it compare to other countries?

ourworldindata.org

 

[BlueHammer85]

The whole green fiasco is pointless until the rest of the world joins in. I'm sick of paying thorugh the nose for all the "green" policies, rip off air zones, anti-polluting "road tax" etc etc. We actually share the air with countries like China and India and if the UK stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it won't take long at all until the CO2 we 'saved' is replaced by additional CO2 from other countries. The UK is NOT a "world leader" , we're a small country mugging it's population....

How much do you pay towards green policies?

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

It boggles my mind that we have seen inflation balloon enormously pretty much entirely due to the price of fossil fuels and geopolitical issues related to them, which has left many struggling to pay their bills, and yet people think green policies are the problem.

Dependence on fossil fuels compromises the stability of our national economy and makes us dependent on imports (isn’t that what this whole thread’s supposed to be about?!)

Renewable energy infrastructure is a way of both preventing catastrophic and sudden price rises, while also achieving a more affordable net unit cost of electricity in the future. This isn’t virtue signalling, it is a simple economic reality that renewables are going to be far cheaper than fossil fuels the further into the future we go.

Executive summary – Renewables 2023 – Analysis - IEA

Renewables 2023 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

www.iea.org

Also your view on China is about two/three years out of date. They also realise that what I’ve stated above is true which is why they are by far the biggest investors in green energy projects in the world. In the first half of this year they added more renewable energy to their grid than the entire UK’s annual energy consumption. Their investment in solar energy projects is greater than the rest of the world combined. They have a lot of work to do but they are doing it.

This whole “oh well China isn’t doing anything” is not only a shit excuse, it is factually wrong.

The fact that China are massively increasing their use of renewable energy is however somewhat offset by the continued expansion of the coal electricity generating sector. Its a mixed up green policy I'm affraid which is being driven by the country's need to kick start their economy which has stalled somewhat after covid.

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

Watch the fucking video you cretin.

You'd start an argument in any empty room.

Seriously, do you think it is a good idea to shut down steel made in coal-burning blast furnances in the UK, so that we can import steel from China, made in coal burning blast furnaces? So they can burn the coal instead and we can happily put Brits out of work and increase global carbon output with the shipping of the stuff? If you don't think that is madness, you are even more stupid than I had imagined.

Insults are the last refuge of a person who knows they have lost the argument before it even began

Mark Twain

 

[Really_here]

How much do you pay towards green policies?

Far too much, for example electricty bills have been increased for years to fund 'investment' in renewable and alternative fuels. For a number of years now various suppliers have trumpted that "all our electricty comes from re-newables" so why do the fucking bills STILL keep going up? Do they have to pay more every year for the wind to blow?
Companies like German owned EON are raking in huge profits and laughing all the way to the bank.
I haven't the energy (pun intended) to list silly projects like this :-

Mayor Steve Rotheram welcomes £22bn Government support for carbon capture projects that will create thousands of jobs

<p>Liverpool City Region and Teesside will pioneer the use of carbon capture technology at scale in the UK.</p>

www.liverpoolcityregion-ca.gov.uk

That's half the famous shock horror newly discovered "black hole" on it's own.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Insults are the last refuge of a person who knows they have lost the argument before it even began

Mark Twain

He can fuck off as well

 

[Streetsweeper]

The whole green fiasco is pointless until the rest of the world joins in. I'm sick of paying thorugh the nose for all the "green" policies, rip off air zones, anti-polluting "road tax" etc etc. We actually share the air with countries like China and India and if the UK stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it won't take long at all until the CO2 we 'saved' is replaced by additional CO2 from other countries. The UK is NOT a "world leader" , we're a small country mugging its population....

Environmental improvements are pointless? What, all of them? The clean air act? The Pollution Act? The National Parks Act? I quite like knowing I’m not drinking arsenic and mercury when I have a brew, or that my nephew is less likely to have lifelong asthma than his grandad did because air quality now is vastly better than it was in the 1950s. We sold nerve agents as a garden pesticide in the 50s, and you had a decent chance of catching polio from going swimming in a river. Some environmental policies are dumb, a lot have revolutionised all our lives, but no area of public policy is less well understood by the public. Perhaps because you can’t see it making money -something painfully obvious when listening to Starmer’s anti-regulation rant earlier this week (some of us tree huggers aren’t all unquestioning lefties).

 

[hampshireblue]

The whole green fiasco is pointless until the rest of the world joins in. I'm sick of paying thorugh the nose for all the "green" policies, rip off air zones, anti-polluting "road tax" etc etc. We actually share the air with countries like China and India and if the UK stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it won't take long at all until the CO2 we 'saved' is replaced by additional CO2 from other countries. The UK is NOT a "world leader" , we're a small country mugging it's population....

Which country would you need to be "on board" before you think it's worth us doing our bit?