UK Steel production looking shaky

I am always reminded of my last job in denmark before moving over here, when i read about the Steel plants.

Making a big steel chimney with swedish or finish steel in Denmark, that chimney was for Corus redcar and it got shipped over here from Esbjerg

Looks like I might have to concede on the idea of using Hydrogen in the short term. A tonne of steel needs about 4mwh of Electrolysis to make the Hydrogen!

the UK govt did not mandate this (making DRI with H2) was included in the $500m subsidy it is giving to TATA

for a H2 DRI steel plant in Wales a $500m subsidy would not have
touched the sides.

Well, yea. I posted that before reading about the costs of H2 production and how far away we are. Still, it’s something to aim for in the future.

TBF, I never suggested the $500m would cover it. (they could’ve said something like ‘ here’s $500m for an EAF, contingent on a commitment to move developing H2 production in future…’) But this is still the direction we should be heading

costs of H2 production and how far away we are.

Yes – that’s why I said it: I worked in the industrial gas industry.

Still, it’s something to aim for in the future.

Yes, but realistically we will do well to have 10% of global capacity from renewable H2 DRI by 2050 – not a practical solution to replace the current plant in Wales during the mid 2020s.

The UK will be, apparently, the only major economy with no capacity to produce virgin steel….whether you think that is a bad thing or not…

I’m sure all we need to do is consult the government’s extensive and detailed industrial strategy to find the answer to that

Oh….

If you can’t make all the ingredients of steel without importing a bunch of stuff, is it really any different from just importing the steel? You’d have to piss off a whole load of countries before no one was willing to sell it to us, and even then there’s a bunch of countries who would be happy to buy it and resell it to us. I can’t see it as a national security issue at all

A lot of the discussion of hydrogen as an alternative fuel makes the mistake of going “yes it’s energy intensive but we can just do it with renewables so it’s clean”. But we’re in a scarcity environment for renewable power, and will be for a long time- so every watt that we use to create hydrogen, means that we’re burning carbon for another watt somewhere else. It ends up being one of those daft budget things where you ignore costs because they’re coming out of a different column in the spreadsheet.

Which is after all how the carbon burning economy has always worked to be fair

Some facts and figures on steel in the UK:
The UK currently consumes about 12 million tonnes of steel per year and makes about 6 million. The country also exports about 6 million tonnes of scrap (of varying quality from good to poor).
Port Talbot currently has a capacity of about 3 million tonnes per year and when rebuilt will only produce about 2.5 million tonnes so the production gap will grow further.
What is happening at Port Talbot is different to British Steel in that the works will all but close for 4 years before restarting and hoping to regain their market. British Steel will continue to make steel at a similar rate throughout their transition (N.B. there will still be significant job losses particularly in Scunthorpe and they will end up employing fewer people).
Unite the Union had a costed plan showing that investment to increase UK steel production to 12 million tonnes per Year was a net benefit to the economy with capital payback of 10 years. GMB and Community Unions had a plan to maintain production and jobs in Port Talbot throughout and could show net benefit to the economy. It appears both plans have been rejected outright by the shareholders (mainly banks and investors in India).
Also hydrogen ironmaking uses less energy than using coal. Hydrogen is the reductant not the energy source. The process is different as reduction is done in the solid phase not the liquid. Most large European steelmakers are moving towards this technology, often via natural gas reduction which is a good intermediate stage. No one in the UK is investing in this and it will result is a huge net loss to the economy long term.

This plan seems to favour a scrap magnate from India looking to export used material to the UK in 10 years time. Thanks for your help, Rishi.

Surely they should just be using heat pumps? Cheaper and no CO2!

Tata will just move more production to iJmuden, the slabs can be imported if needed for processing in the UK.

One of the reasons for this – and other companies closing in the UK but not in thr EU is its very cheap to lay off workers here, very expensive in most EU countries – so the company wants to close a plant – its far cheaper for them to close the UK one

5lab
Full Member

If you can’t make all the ingredients of steel without importing a bunch of stuff, is it really any different from just importing the steel? You’d have to piss off a whole load of countries before no one was willing to sell it to us, and even then there’s a bunch of countries who would be happy to buy it and resell it to us. I can’t see it as a national security issue at all

I thought we actually had all the raw materials in abundance, one aspect of our headstart on the industrial revolution.

The coal, yes. Expect to pay a lot more for quality steel in future, folks. And when your train is late, this will be why.

I’m sure all we need to do is consult the government’s extensive and detailed industrial strategy to find the answer to that

Hmm remove all the protections(?) and put some carbon offset import taxes a year later than the eu.

Anyway what is it British steel -> corus -> ta ta .

Not sure it’s ever recently been anything other than something a bit shaky.Perhaps it a touch of Brexit, a dash of green and a dash of over paying(wasn’t corus  5 x tata size so into the bank for shedloads of debt on the acquisition.)
Tata acquire corus

Bulk steel? Whatever.

Specialized steel? Without that there is no arms industry. And without that?

I suppose another industry we will be depending on China for?

“One stat that jumped out for me was that it’s 0.1% of GDP but 2% of our annual pollution, if that is correct then it is surely an unsustainable approach”

Unless we all stop using steel (and that’s not going to happen – steel concrete and glass are what nearly everything not plastic is made from) then we just unsustainably shift the same pollution (or worse if they burn more coal and shittier coal or worse still, lignite ) to other countries when they make the steel. Except with more industrial deaths due to lower safety regulation and the extra pollution of shipping the steel  10 thousand of miles to Blighty from China rather than a couple of hundred miles by rail in Britain.

Funny you mention Redcar steelworks as they are planning on building a hydrogen production reactor next door to Hartlepool power station.

Joined up thinking, as always.

Rather than throw any more money at Sunak’s mate who own the plant give the money to the workers to open/start their own businesses

About the second part, where is the demand going to come from for those all businesses to serve? Genuinely curious. Sounds like it would keep a lot of new businesses going for a year or two, and a boon for training companies.

One stat that jumped out for me was that it’s 0.1% of GDP but 2% of our annual pollution, if that is correct then it is surely an unsustainable approach, or as I suspect, is that a massively simplistic way of looking at it?

20% of Wales’ emissions. These figures will look good on the chart a the next COP.

Unite the Union had a costed plan showing that investment to increase UK steel production to 12 million tonnes per Year was a net benefit to the economy with capital payback of 10 years. GMB and Community Unions had a plan to maintain production and jobs in Port Talbot throughout and could show net benefit to the economy. It appears both plans have been rejected outright by the shareholders (mainly banks and investors in India).

Devil’s advocate, but they would say that wouldn’t they? The investors and the gov won’t trust them. And anyway investors don’t care about the economy, the gov is ideologically opposed to that sort of thing.

About the second part, where is the demand going to come from for those all businesses to serve?

UK steel demand is about 12 million tonnes per year, approximately twice UK production. The demand is there.
A lot of Port Talbot products go into the car industry which is still a major employer. They will now likely import a greater proportion from Europe.

Also China is now effectively ‘offshoring’ a load of it’s emissions by building steel plants in Indonesia and other parts of SE Asia as these countries have less scrutiny on their emissions than China.

I wasn’t referring to steel demand, rather the demand for whatever the ex-staff’s new grant funded businesses would do.