This autumn marks the end of traditional steel making in South Wales and the shut down of the UK’s last coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire. The closure of the Tata Steel blast furnace at Port Talbot is the culmination of a long-drawn and deliberate running down of the UK’s steel industry by governments without serious industrial ambition and in thrall to global capital. The UK’s remaining blast furnaces at the Chinese-owned British Steel plant in Scunthorpe are also soon to close, ending our domestic capacity to produce primary steel, an accolade shared with only Saudi Arabia in the G20. Let’s not forget, too, the loss of as many as 5,000 jobs, a devastating blow to families and communities that the modern politician can scarcely understand.
The final powering down of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station – familiar to me from the enigmatic photographs of Michael Kenna and as an ever-present landmark on the horizon when I was a student in nearby Loughborough – has been hailed as evidence of Britain’s global leadership in the drive towards Net Zero. Labour and Tory politicians have lined up to take credit for their part in making the UK the first G7 nation to wean itself off coal-power generation (beating energy-secure France by a few months). But in reality this is all part of a long process of industrial decline.
Regulatory changes, privatisation and the “dash for gas” meant that, by the end of the 1990s, coal accounted for less than a third of the UK’s electricity. That coal was still being burned to power the grid in late 2024 is perhaps the most surprising part of this story and is a testament to how fragile and disordered the UK’s energy sector has become. Ed Miliband – a Net Zero evangelist – and others shouldn’t congratulate themselves too much on their role in reducing the UK’s generating CO2 footprint. Britain still relies on the Drax power station for at least 4 per cent of electricity generation. This former coal power station, converted to biomass, has been described by Ember, the clean energy think tank, as “by far the largest single CO2 emitter in the UK” (four times more polluting than the decommissioned Ratcliffe plant).
But, by a quirk of green accounting and a fiction of Alice in Wonderland proportions, it is counted as carbon neutral and falls on the renewables side of the ledger. This “green” farce of shipping processed wood mostly from virgin forest in North America to be burnt at the Drax power station in Yorkshire also comes with a vast subsidy (£539m last year and nearly £7bn since Drax converted from coal in 2012, according to Ember).
Ratcliffe-on-Soar had been scheduled to close two years ago but was retained because of gas supply fears after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Decades of poor planning and underinvestment had left the UK’s power supply without any headroom and the national grid dependent on imports (mostly from France). In June, Britain imported 19 per cent of its electricity and 2024 is set to be a record year overall. The UK’s electricity generation per capita is closer to South Africa and Brazil than it is to France and Germany, let alone Japan and the United States (at two to three times the UK’s level). Britain is about as far away from being an energy superpower – green or otherwise – as it is possible to be. The Labour government’s “Net Zero” ambitions in this regard look like a fantasy.
An obvious route towards greater energy security is to reinvigorate the moribund nuclear power sector. But Miliband has already ruled this out (he is thought to be baulking at current plans for the Wylfa site in Anglesey and dropping existing targets for future nuclear capacity). He and Rachel Reeves will no doubt be mindful of the insane costs and generation-long lead times involved in developing nuclear power Britain, rivalled only by building high speed rail. The only nuclear plant currently under construction, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, will have taken 20 years to build by the time it is operational in 2030, at a final cost estimated of £45bn.
The government’s energy strategy, therefore, is going all-in on intermittent renewables and carbon capture technology. The former is proven technology, the latter is largely not, and both are hugely expensive. The UK’s energy costs are ruinously high, with industry having to pay by far the highest prices in the developed world. This is not just a problem for what is left of Britain’s traditional heavy industry but also for the high-tech sector that the government is so desperate to woo. AI and other cutting-edge tech businesses depend on large data centres consuming huge quantities of electricity.
Decarbonising the power sector by 2030 meanwhile – the government’s pointlessly ambitious target date – could cost up to £400bn (according to a 2023 National Audit Office report). The Labour government continually pitches the plan as part of a clean energy revolution that will bring “decent, well-paid jobs”. But until it can deliver significantly lower energy prices, too many of the jobs will be created outside Britain. The millions of tons of steel required for the new infrastructure – wind farms, carbon capture pipelines and the vast network of new pylons set to blight the countryside – will not be made in Britain, and much of the primary manufacturing will also take place overseas.
Ed Miliband’s green energy strategy is high risk – and, at worst, his plans are an act of folly that will lead to higher energy prices, job losses and, perhaps, even blackouts. Onwards to the “green” future.
