FERGUS EWING: Backbones of steel will be needed to save our remaining industrial base
The loss of Scotland’s only refinery at Grangemouth and the nationalisation of British Steel have both been caused by one main factor: the swingeing costs of energy for British industry.
Not only are they three or four times higher than in the USA but they are about 50 per cent higher than Germany or France.
Quite simply energy intensive industry in Britain has become hugely uncompetitive.
Producers in the UK, whether of steel, chemicals or cement will struggle to survive even for much more than a few years. These products can be made much more cheaply elsewhere.
The simple but unpalatable truth is, that without radical changes very soon, many more major UK manufacturers will be forced to shut their doors .
But instead of taking positive steps to prevent this predictable disaster, the main parties continue to intone the mantra of ‘net zero’ as though it takes precedence over all else.
Yet, Britain produces only one per cent of global carbon emissions, and Scotland one tenth of that. Somehow the notion has been successfully peddled, that we in Scotland can solve global warming just by ourselves.
This is arrant nonsense. The truth is that as we as a country produce one in a thousand of total carbon emissions worldwide.
The simple but unpalatable truth is, that without radical changes very soon, many more major UK manufacturers will be forced to shut their doors
So the inconvenient truth is, that what we do here is I’m afraid, numerically irrelevant.
Instead we should focus on how innovation in technology can provide solutions - such as new ways of large scale energy storage and further reduction of the emissions from oil and gas production.
With Norway and a few others we’re already doing the latter. I will write about that on another day.
Meanwhile, UK grid charges to industry are far far too high. Furthermore, existing policies in of both governments are in effect exterminating our own oil and gas industry - one of the most successful in engineering terms in the world.
This is quite simply bonkers.
The trade body Offshore Energy UK have proven this in their recent excellent report: Even if we produce every last extractable barrel of oil or gas equivalent we can from the North Sea , we will still be substantially within the acceptable carbon limit as set by the UK climate committee.
We will then save up to 100,000 jobs, and avoid a gaping hole in Treasury taxation from the loss of tens of billions of tax revenue from oil and gas production.
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The sooner both Messrs Swinney and Starmer wake up to what is staring them in the face, the sooner the necessary measures can be taken to avert the further exodus of manufacturing from the UK.
Backbones of steel will be needed to save our remaining industrial base.
From my recent discussions with senior industry figures , they have months, not years to sort this out, and cease the self inflicted destruction of manufacturing industry.