The UK is set to become the only country in the G20 without the ability to make steel from raw materials as its largest plant goes “green” and is expected to cut nearly 3,000 jobs in the process.
Indian-owned Tata Steel announced on Friday that it will be scrapping its blast furnaces at the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales and will replace them with an electric-powered arc furnace in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The move, which the poorly-named Conservative government gave £500 million in taxpayer money to help achieve, will mean that Britain will no longer be able to domestically produce steel from raw materials, given that the electric furnaces will only be able to convert recycled materials into steel.
This form of recycled steel is much weaker than that made from raw materials, and therefore cannot be used to make military vehicles and other defence projects. It will mean that Britain will become the only nation in the G20 incapable of producing its own steel from raw materials domestically, The Guardian reported.
The green conversion of the steelworks will also take upwards of four years to complete and will see as many as 2,800 jobs cut, severely impacting the small town of 32,000 that has already suffered under decades of deindustrialization.
Commenting on the scheme, vice-chair of the Port Talbot multi unions Gary Keogh said: “This plant isn’t part of the community, it is the community. We’re now fighting for a way of life. We’re an endangered species… The mood is devastation, uncertainty and probably overnight – certainly in my case – it’s going to be anger.”
Keogh also questioned the supposed environmental benefits of the conversion of the steelworks, saying that Britain will simply look for virgin steel overseas, meaning that even more carbon will be emitted, albeit out of site and out of mind on the other side of the world.
“They want to make their steel in Jamshedpur [India] … bring it thousands of miles across the ocean on ships with diesel engines, and call it green. It’s time people were honest,” he said.
This analysis was echoed by the chairman of The Spectator and former BBC presenter Andrew Neil, who wrote in the Daily Mail: “The irony is that decimating our heavy industry does not, in fact, reduce global CO2 emissions. It is reckoned that converting Port Talbot to greener electric arc production will cut our CO2 emissions by 1.5 per cent.
“But that will be swamped by the rise in CO2 emissions elsewhere as we import more steel from countries, especially China, which still generate electricity with dirty coal,” Neil added, noting that China’s CO2 emissions have spiked by 13 per cent over the past decade and therefore “swamp” any reductions made by Britain’s Net Zero policies.
The veteran journalist went on to characterise the government-inspired decision by Tata Steel as symbolic of the failures of the political elite in London and their “green virtue-signalling”, which comes at the expense of working-class communities.
He wrote that the governing Conservative party and the left-wing opposition Labour Party — which traditionally championed workers prior to their green shift — are “failing ordinary British people. They are unanimous in their support of Net Zero, whatever the cost in terms of lost jobs, prosperity, energy security or economic growth.”
The leader of the Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK party, Richard Tice, said that British steel workers have been “sacrificed on the altar of the madness of Net Zero”.
“The Labour Party don’t care, Keir Starmer doesn’t care, Ed Miliband doesn’t care, the Tory party don’t care, Rishi Sunak doesn’t care… they are all obsessed with Net Zero.”
Tice said that Reform UK is the only major party in Britain that will stand up for workers, vowing to “promote and defend skilled manufacturing jobs in the UK”.