UK’s largest steelworks given £500M to decarbonise

Now let's see if Tata Steel will be true to it's words. They are trying to do the same in the Netherlands where it has been proven that they are emitting significantly more hazardous chemicals than allowed into the air after having being given subsidies to reduce them. This has lead to a significant higher rate of cancer close to the plant. Of course the government has been looking to other way cause... Jobs.

In the meantime they are being out competed by the Swedes with their hydrocarbon plant.

I wouldn't trust Tata Steel with a dime.

> It is not a just transition if thousands of jobs are sacrificed in the name of short-term environmental gains.

I'm never happy to see people lose their jobs, but "short-term environmental gains" strikes me as a ridiculous way of framing a significant reduction of carbon emissions.

The article mentions the deal would reduce the UK's carbon emissions by 1.5%

From [0] the UK's steel industry apparently accounts for 2.4% of all emissions, so clearly a huge chunk of the (small) UK steel making industry.

I've seen guestimates of the total cost to fully decarbonise the country going into the trillions, so on face value this would appear value for money or perhaps low hanging fruit.

[0] https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-...

The whole steelworks would probably close without this money, which is a subsidy to keep it open sugar-coated as help to decarbonise.

Edit: Also, apparently confidential guarantees were given to many large companies following Brexit. This might be one... (Port Talbot voted for Brexit, btw)

It says they’ll save 3000 jobs

£500,000,000 / 3000 = £166,666

Average salary in port talbot is £28,000

Why not give those 3000 people 100k each and save 200 million?

Just for a sense of scale I looked up the production stats:

    Port Talbot Steelworks is an integrated steel production plant in Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales, capable of producing nearly 5 million tonnes of steel slab per annum.

    This makes it the larger of the two major steel plants in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. Over 4,000 people work at the plant.

Note the capable, other figures suggest it produces at most 4 million tonnes of steel per annum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Talbot_Steelworks

For that scale comparasion, though, I live in an iron ore producing state, one of the three largest global suppliers ATM, and we export about 800 million tonnes of iron ore (mainly to China) per annum.

That's 160x more (input) tonnage than the max Port Talbot output (just iron ore, not including the required coking coal for steel making and additional coal(?) for production energy.

Of course it's not all Uh-Oh evil China here - China is making steel at scale (at a mutitude of grades from high quality to shitty steel) for the world market, US and EU customers are consuming a large proportion of that steel.

Decarbonisation is hard - the numbers are large and the problem areas are dispersed across the globe.

So, they plan to switch from blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces. But there's a catch. Or actually two. The first is that the blast furnace smelts ore and produces iron and steel. That is energy and carbon intensive. The electric arc furnace processes recycled steel. That is much less energy and carbon intensive. You could say "great, a victory for recycling". But in reality is just moving the blast furnace to another part of the world. Every year the world produces some steel from recycled steel and some from ore. Switching from ore to recycled steel is not going to magically reduce the need for new steel. That new steel will still be needed, and it will be produced in China.

The second catch is that the electric arc furnace is carbon neutral only if the electricity that it uses is carbon neutral. The world is moving in that direction, so this is good. The only thing is that it's not the steel plant that's doing the heavy lifting, but the solar or wind plants that generate the green electricity. So, why the large subsidy to the steel plant? Their blast furnaces were at the end of their life, and they were going to replace them with arc furnaces anyway.

Well, after all it's a step in the right direction. Nothing is perfect.

The article doesn't describe the difference in process between electric arc and blast furnaces properly. Coking/metallurgical coal isn't just used for heat in steel production but because it creates a chemical reaction which normal (thermal) coal doesn't.

With an electric arc furnace, you have to use methane to achieve direct reduction instead. It's possible to use hydrogen instead of methane to do this although that doesn't make sense from an emissions standpoint unless you have a source of H2 which is produced by electrolysis using a non CO2 emitting source of electricity (and moreover from a global perspective you would ideally also want to be sure that there isn't a better use of that electricity).

I'm not clear on if that's what's proposed here but I would assume not - as I would expect the UK government would be shouting about this very loudly if so given the level of hype there is around hydrogen.

The Empire strikes back. The remnants of the UK steel industry, which once led the world, are being taken over by an Indian company.

here’s the government’s press release for anyone interested: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/welsh-steels-future-secur...

Governments should give money for the RESULT.

that's a bad headline.

it's been given that much money to avoid a very embarrassing fight/mass sacking/corporate collapse for the government. tata has come and got the government to given them loads of cash before for the same reason.

Tata Steel becomes Tata Iron after de-carbonization?

Is this a good use of £500M of our money?

The craze to remove random elements from the general mix continues. I personally would nominate Fluorine to be eliminated next.