The Scunthorpe steelworks are barely a few dozen miles from the rich coal deposits of South Yorkshire.
Yet perversely the future of virgin steelmaking in this country is dependent on two shiploads of coal that have chugged half way around the world, one from the US (which finally offloaded its cargo at Immingham yesterday) and the other from Australia.
It defies all practical sense, given that transportation over such distances takes longer – hardly ideal for a steelworks that is days from closure – is more costly and emits vastly more carbon into the atmosphere. Yet this is where our fraudulent drive to reach net zero has led us.
Consider these figures. Shipping a tonne of coal 1,000 miles emits 5kg of carbon, according to estimates from research firm Thunder Said Energy. By that token, the 55,000 tonnes of coal sitting in the Navios Alegria – the ship that will reach Britain in a few days having journeyed the 11,000 miles from Australia – will have cost the environment over 3,000 tonnes of carbon.
By comparison, the average Briton will be responsible for 4.4 tonnes of carbon in a year.
Seven years ago, mining company H J Banks & Co commissioned a study into how much extra carbon emissions are generated by importing coal as opposed to feeding our steel and brick industries with coal mined in Britain. It calculated that producing 800,000 tonnes of coal would emit 51,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in Britain. By contrast, shipping the same amount from Russia would emit 57,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – and that figure excludes emissions from the mining operation itself.
The future of virgin steelmaking in this country is dependent on two shiploads of coal that have chugged half way around the world, one from the US (which finally offloaded its cargo at Immingham yesterday) and the other from Australia
Coal and coke mounds at the British Steel bulk terminal site at Immingham Docks
In other words, if you want to minimise global carbon emissions, it is better to use local coal.
However, the Government’s net zero target, driven by Energy Security Secretary Ed Miliband, gives a contradictory incentive to close our mines and import coal instead – because emissions from coal mines in Russia, Australia or elsewhere do not count on Britain’s carbon ledger.
So it is little wonder the planning application for a Whitehaven coal mine on the Cumbrian coast was formally withdrawn last week. The previous government gave it a green light, which environmental campaigners had successfully challenged in the High Court, convincing judge Mr Justice Holgate that ministers had not considered whether the emissions from burning the coal would breach Britain’s net zero commitments.
But even if we did have an operational mine at Whitehaven, British Steel two years ago closed its coking works – the process which is crucial for steelmaking – with 230 job losses.
The company said it was driven to close the energy-intensive plant because its electricity bill and carbon levies had increased its costs by £190million in a year.
It is a complaint familiar to all sectors of our heavy industry.
Britain has some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the West at almost 26p per kilowatt-hour. In the US, it is the equivalent of 6½p. German firms pay an average of 17.7p per kilowatt-hour and the French 17.8p.
It is embarrassing – and tragic – that a once-great industrial power is scrabbling around the world for coking coal in an 11th-hour bid to save the last remnant of our virgin steel industry.
Even so, it will take rather more than a couple of shiploads. We need to completely rethink industrial policy by championing our native mines and slashing punitive carbon levies. There is no point in cutting Britain’s territorial CO2 emissions if all we are doing is offshoring yet more emissions to other countries.
It is a farcical process that makes the environment suffer more than it needs to – and kneecaps British steelmaking.
