Lessons from Steel…
As the coking ovens cool down for the final time and steelworkers at Port Talbot grapple with what their future will be, there is also disquiet in another industry that is also central to our economy.
What can we learn about what has happened at Tata in recent months that can stop similar shocks to the economy?
Lack of leadership and collaboration is at the heart of problems at Port Talbot. Everyone knew, and accepted, that the steel industry along with most others has to decarbonise, it until now has been the biggest emitter of CO2 in the UK.
For more than two years Tata had looking for direction as to which path the UK would take as it decarbonised. Would it be based on hydrogen or renewable energy.
Tata warned publicly, it waited and then made its own decision.
As a result the two blast furnaces are being switched off, three thousand jobs will go and in 36 months it plans to open an electric arc steelworks to recycle steel.
But it didn’t have to be this way.
Look at ABP’s plans for Port Talbot docks, launched a few years ago. You see a vision with an array of new manufacturing industries involving steel and energy that could have resulted in seamless employment for those working now at Tata, irrespective of the path that Tata took for its decarbonisation. Similarly with better planning and leadership the steelworks could have moved from carbon based steel to green steel without closing for three years.
It gets worse!
Right alongside Tata’s steel works at Port Talbot a company called LanzaTech is building a plant to make low carbon aviation fuel. It will employ around 200 people, and guess what? It will turn waste CO2 from other industries, like steelmaking, into a greener fuel for planes.
It’s ironic in the extreme.
Agriculture is another foundational industry that needs to decarbonise. At the moment fertilisers, weedkillers, diesel, ploughing and other activities on farms account for 12% of all the carbon used in Wales. While other industries have reduced their carbon use in the last decade, the carbon impact of farming in Wales it has stayed pretty much the same.
The way farmers were paid by the EU to produce food is coming to an end as part of Brexit. The Welsh Government has been consulting farmers about its latest version of a system to replace what existed when the UK was in the EU. The debate about the plans contents has become toxic and highly politicised.
A similar, but different, scheme has been agreed in England.
So how does Wales make sure that the lack of vision, collaboration and co-ordination we have seen around the decarbonisation of steel does not happen to food production?
We import around half of the food we eat in the UK and its higher for fruit and vegetables. If we grew more varieties of crops in Wales, not only would we be less vulnerable to global shocks from wars or climate events like draughts and floods, but it would lead to news jobs growing, distributing and preserving a range of foods. Similarly, farmers have always cut timber, coppiced woods and looked after hedges. More work preserving those and other elements of the countryside would create more employment.
What we cannot afford to do is retreat into our silos and hope decarbonisation and climate change will go away. It won’t and instead we need to work together and plan for a new future.