Essay by Eric Worrall
Inexperienced financial absurdity at its most interesting.
ANDREW NEIL: Port Talbot has been sacrificed to the altar of Internet Zero – which is why Labour’s crocodile tears are exhausting to abdomen
PUBLISHED: 09:00 AEDT, 20 January 2024 | UPDATED: 21:34 AEDT, 20 January 2024
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Port Talbot is the newest sufferer of the Tory Authorities’s headlong rush in direction of Internet Zero carbon emissions which has pushed up British power costs and made what’s left of our heavy business uneconomic.
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Port Talbot is the UK’s largest steelworks. It’s owned by an Indian conglomerate, Tata Metal, which, with British Authorities encouragement, is changing its blast furnaces with an electrical arc furnace that may emit much less CO2.
It additionally requires much less labour, therefore the two,500 job losses, most of which is able to go within the subsequent 18 months. These losses are the direct consequence of the Authorities’s Internet Zero technique.
The Tories are so eager on pursuing it that they’re even stumping up £500 million of taxpayers’ cash to assist Tata meet the £1.25 billion price of changing to the electrical arc course of.
So, in impact, the Authorities is utilizing our cash to pay Tata to shed jobs. Such is the zealotry behind Internet Zero. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the choice is the entire closure of the plant — and it’s true that Port Talbot has been dropping Tata cash for years.
The irony is that decimating our heavy business doesn’t, actually, cut back international CO2 emissions. It’s reckoned that changing Port Talbot to greener electrical arc manufacturing will minimize our CO2 emissions by 1.5 per cent.
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Learn extra: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12984989/andrew-neil-Port-Talbot-sacrificed-alter-Internet-zero.html
I used to suppose Arc furnaces are solely good for recycled metal, however Arc furnaces can apparently course of iron ore, although I couldn’t discover any details about the financial viability of this ore smelting course of.
Whether or not the brand new Arc furnace is barely used for recycled metal, or whether or not they try a full ore to metal course of, melting metal with electrical energy requires plenty of low cost electrical energy.
However Port Talbot is in Wales, and Wales has an issue with electrical energy. In keeping with a report by the Welsh authorities produced in March final 12 months, Wales has excessive electrical energy prices.
Does the British or Welsh authorities plan to subsidise the electrical energy payments of a international metal firm, whereas their very own individuals are struggling and struggling to pay family payments?
The press assertion from Tata metal, the corporate which owns Port Talbot, suggests a transition interval during which the corporate would obtain half completed metal merchandise from abroad, whereas evaluating whether or not metal manufacturing ought to proceed at Port Talbot – in order that $500 million agreed subsidy could not even have secured a promise of an ongoing metal enterprise.
I’m guessing much more cash shall be demanded within the close to future, to maintain this taxpayer funded boondoggle afloat.
