The UK steel industry has called for the government to promise to buy British as it prepares for a major expansion of offshore wind generation.
Wind generation has become a key part of the UK’s energy system, contributing 29% of generated electricity in 2023. However, despite the huge increase in the number of turbines, only 2% of the steel used in British offshore wind projects over the past five years was made in the UK, according to a study by the consultants Lumen Energy & Environment, commissioned by UK Steel, a lobby group.
Gosh, really?
However, much of that forthcoming demand will be for plate steel, which is not now made at sufficient scale in the UK. Making more in the UK would require investment from private companies that may not be forthcoming without a government pledge to favour British products
So the demand is that we should subsidise the creation of a plate steel industry in order to build steel for a subsidised wind industry which will then get charged higher prices – requiring higher subsidy – and this will make Britain richer?
There is a point at which we tell ‘ em to fuck off, isn’t there?
I have a suspicion that this might actually succeed. The economic philosophy of mercantilism is making a big come back. Just look what is going on in America.
And don’t forget that Milliband is insane (allegedly). Comparing two numbers is a task way beyond his intellectual abilities.
The pigs are lining up at the trough.
This Green crap (copyright Lord Cameron) is too complicated for me. I thought that by being disciples of Nut Zero we were forbidden to make steel, only recycle it? Isn’t stuff like mining heresy? We’d have to use machinery, which is a sin! We’d have to dig up iron ore, heat it up, blow oxygen through it and so forth. Greta would faint if she looked away from the mass murder of the poor unfortunate terrorists who she now seems to have taken under her wing.
Isn’t it all part of the grand plan? We are to rely on stuff we can’t make to build stuff we can’t make to provide electricity that we can’t use to power all those electric cars we can’t make and can’t recharge.
Now I’m getting depressed. Time for a drink. I’ll have what Ed’s having…
“contributing 29% of generated electricity in 2023.”
Varying, of course from 50%+ to less than 5%. With little predictability of which of those two you are going to get in the next few weeks.
https://gridwatch.co.uk is always good for a laugh, especially when combined with https://www.windy.com/. The former tells you what’s happening; the latter why. Right now gas is providing 55% of UK grid power; wind 6%; solar 1%. The French interconnectors are going gangbusters.
Windy tells us why: a great big high-pressure system centred on the German/Polish/Czech border, covering ALL of Western Europe and Scandinavia.
We’re fortunate it’s not freezing with it. Another 1963 would sort these buggers out.
“Varying, of course from 50%+ to less than 5%. With little predictability of which of those two you are going to get in the next few weeks.”
Currently 6% wind, 2% solar, 52% CCGT.
“So the demand is that we should subsidise the creation of a plate steel industry in order to build steel for a subsidised wind industry which will then get charged higher prices – requiring higher subsidy – and this will make Britain richer?”
Well if the argument is that producing steel is ‘bad’ (because CO2 emissions) then surely the thing to do is ensure that the steel used in the UK for wind turbines is made in a way that produces the least CO2 possible. Which presumably would indeed mean in the UK, using electric arc furnaces, close to the point of use. After all it would be highly hypocritical to import steel from somewhere the other side of the world (China say) producing steel in manners no longer allowed in the UK.
No we all know the CO2 emissions thing is bollocks on stilts (except our host, who doesn’t want to admit it publicly for fear of being cancelled) but its important to hold these people to their own principles. If we are going to built elebenty million bird choppers they must be built in the most CO2 friendly manner possible. And force them to do so at every point. Make it as expensive as possible by using their own principles at them. Which will of course eventually kill the idea.
But the idea that our host should attack the building of these bird mincers on the grounds of ‘they aren’t adhering to free trade principles’ is a) missing the point massively, b) allowing the principle that they should be built at all to go unopposed and c) helping them, because if they use cheap materials from abroad the whole project is more likely to get somewhere. Far better to make them use the most expensive and gold plated materials and methods possible (because their own principles demand it anyway) and make the scheme fail catastrophically.
True free trade does not exist. Only the constant desire by some for true free trade.
Nuclear power would be cheaper in the UK if we had not gold plated the nuclear regulations. There was a point in the past when the UK built a nuclear power plant in about 5 years and not too far to budget. Only South Korea is able to build a nuclear plant to time and budget at the moment.
When we decided on Hinkley Point C, the French needed to make 7000 (count them!) changes to the design in order to meet the new and “improved” nuclear regulations. These included a tsunami protection walls (because we get those every other week in the UK. has anyone seen them?) and a special underwater sound system to scare the fish away so they are not sucked in by the intakes for the cooling system. I think I also read that the safety shell surrounding the reactors was also re-enforced to be able to withstand terrorists flying aircraft into it. And there are three reactors at Hinkley Point C. However, I have not been able to confirm that one.
It is almost as if the environmentalists wanted to make it as difficult and expensive to build a nuclear reactor as possible in the UK.
So we subsidise the steel plants to build the subsidised turbines which produce electricity so expensive that the steel building them needs to be subsidised?
Madness, but I agree with Jim, the faster we do it the sooner it all collapses. My condolences to those who lose elderly relatives as a consequence.
However, I really think it’s going to require significant public protest and a few people forced to warm themselves with the embers of politicians’ homes for anything to happen.
We need it to collapse as soon as possible, before they piss everything down the sink. That includes mass immigration, an even worse problem. You can demolish windmills and solar panels; you can build mini-nukes. Getting rid of the Diversity will be more troublesome and will require pikes and pitchforks.
Public opinion seems to be fairly stable in belief in global warming and the need to do something about it.
But it may be more febrile than the net zerards think. The combination of the latest bill landing on the doormat and a “load shedding” power cut just as people are thinking about cooking dinner might create a “preference cascade” where opinion turns on a sixpence. Bugger getting cold and poor to help babies yet unborn. And if Putin cuts an interconnector then we’ll all be screaming for nukes and drilling rigs in our back yards.
“contributing 29% of generated electricity in 2023.”
There’s a reporting trick in there – wind contributed around 24% of demanded electricity in 2023 from memory. If you include the electricity that was generated, or capable of being generated, but which wasn’t needed so gut dumped into hydrolysis or the ether, then you get the higher 29% number. And on such chicanery, Ed Miliband will achieve a 95% (which is the new 100%) clean grid by 2030.
Oh, good. More “stakeholders.” That always guarantees efficient resource allocation.
Philip, no one calls it load shedding anymore. The modern term is demand management. The company I work for has a deal with their electricity provider, they can tell us to cut off from the grid and fire up our diesel genset instead when they’re worried about supply shortages. There are agreements about notice, number of times they can do it and so on, and of course we get a cheaper deal on electricity in return, but the fact remains that a large part of my home state is running on diesel on hot afternoons. So much for net zero, it’s all smoke and mirrors.
Oh well, we’d have to run up the genny at least once a month anyway to keep it maintained for an emergency, so it works for us.
@ Salamander
I don’t know about fish being sucked into the cooling systems, but I do know that when my ship was sailing on the UK East coast the engineers would have to spend hours cleaning our cooler strainers of dead fish every time we passed Sizewell because of the fish being attracted to the warm water outfall from the reactors. Makes me suspicious of environmentalist claims of sea temperature rise killing all the fish.