UK domestically-produced steel is being excluded from public and private infrastructure procurement due to “short-sighted” low-emission specifications, at a time when the industry is transitioning, Kallanish heard from a panel at this week’s Make UK conference in London.
Gareth Stace, director general, UK Steel, highlighted the Welsh government as an example of policymakers excluding British Steel-made construction steel for being produced via the blast furnace route, despite the firm’s intention to move to electric arc furnace steelmaking.
“Many short-sighted projects say ‘we need so-called green steel’, [but] there’s no agreed global definition of green steel, so they see green steel as steel from the electric arc furnace route,” he said.
Therefore, buying EAF-produced steel from abroad allows buyers to tick boxes for purchasing low-carbon steel. Whereas buying domestically means “ensuring that that company has the money to invest to actually transition,” he added.
Alasdair McDiarmid, assistant general secretary, Community Union, highlighted other UK infrastructure projects such as Net Zero Teesside and Lower Thames Crossing where foreign steel has been used on the basis of “environmental carbon requirements”.
“There are two almost conflicting arguments, the drive to go green and there’s what we want to do which is support UK industry and UK jobs,” he said.
Meanwhile, Peter Quinn, director of sustainability and environment, Tata Steel UK, highlighted the lack of “nuance” in specifications that define low-CO2 steel.
“There’s a battleground out there; there’s a lot of people with lots of vested interests representing steel companies and governments across the whole world who’ve all got their view about [how] low CO2 should be defined,” he said.
He also highlighted contracts that now cannot be fulfilled by domestic steelmakers due to stricter customer requirements. “We can’t supply to a dodgy specification that someone else has written in a boardroom somewhere on the other side of the world,” he observed.
Quinn noted the plan to decarbonise the UK’s electricity grid by 2035. “We’ll be making steel from scrap, which has arisen in the UK, melting with electricity which is net zero … it takes a little bit of time to get there.”
He saw it as “ridiculous” for customers to not buy from Tata Steel now even though it is “demonstrably” on a journey to decarbonise.
Meanwhile, changes to frameworks could also help domestic producers supply more steel into upcoming infrastructure projects. Carles Rovira, chief executive at 7 Steel, said: “When you see the energy transition, SMRs, offshore, the infrastructure the UK needs to build, if we have the right conditions that can supply us with some growth for steel, because that’s going to be future construction, or building overall the UK infrastructure, and that is coming in the next 10-15 years. If we have the right framework now, we will be able to supply more of those growth opportunities.”
