Once again the steel industry is missing the point

We can all argue over whether we should have a policy about climate change emissions but start from the point that we do. That policy being that Britian should stop doing things which have lots of climate change emissions:

“Some of the reduction in steel production is in response to reduced demand, but the exorbitant energy prices faced by industry have clearly taken their toll on industry in the UK.”

Soaring energy costs, typically at least 50 per cent more than continental competitors, and environmental penalties levied on high carbon-emitting plants are behind a decision by British Steel, the operator of blast furnaces at Scunthorpe owned by Jingye, of China, to cut 800 jobs, a quarter of its workforce.

As with Tata at Port Talbot, that’s working then.

No, really. The aim, the point of the policy, is that we stop doing things highly emittive like use blast furnaces to make iron and steel. We’ve made using blast furnaces to make iron and steel uneconomic. Excellent, job done.

The industry complaints are that the policy is working in achieving its express aim.

This is then followed up with the begging bowl:

It applied for £300 million of state aid to save the plant…(…)…“This is a critical point in time when the sector needs to decarbonise and transform, something that can only be done in partnership with government,”

….and so on and etc. Having been deliberately driven out of business in this old tech we now want subsidy to build the new tech - DRI steel making for example.

But that’s incorrect. If it makes economic sense to build a DRI plant in Britain then one will be built. It’s not difficult to find the capital for things that make economic sense. If no one is willing to put the capital into a project then we’ve that very good indication that it doesn’t make economic sense. At which point of course government shouldn’t be throwing the populace’s cash at something that doesn’t make economic sense - that just a way of making the populace poorer.

Either making virgin steel in Britain using non-emittive techs makes sense or it does not. That it doesn’t make sense but we must dun taxpayers to do it anyway is not a good idea.

We do not, for a moment, think that the steel industry nor its fund raisers are ignorant of all of the above. We do think that politics might be stupid enough to swallow the glaring inconsistencies in the logic behind that begging bowl. We mean we hope they won’t be that silly but worry that they will.

The entire aim of climate policy is to close down industries like this archaic method of making virgin steel. If the new method doesn’t make sense to do in Britain then it doesn’t make sense to do it in Britain.

There is nothing else anyone needs to know here - nor anything else anyone should fall for either.