I HAVE enormous sympathy with the steel workers who have lost their employment (“Tata Steel axes 270 jobs and mothballs Scots plants”, The Herald, October 21, and Letters, October 22). But the real villain here needs to be identified; that is electricity prices, 40 per cent of the cost of UK steel.
The forward price for electricity here is £42/MWh, in France (80 per cent nuclear) it is £27 and in Germany £21.50 (no steel closures there). This disparity, which will continue to increase, is driven by green taxes and the two-year carbon floor price. These are among the highest worldwide which with other policies will double the price of electricity by 2020.
These taxes account for about one-third of the cost of industrial electricity and this will rise to a half by 2020. But just as bad is the shortfall in electricity supply occasioned by the premature closure of coal and gas-fired power stations.The loss of Redcar and movement of other industries out of the UK was a prior signal of what has been going wrong.
This damaging impact has resulted from political decisions that sought to advance Scotland in particular and the rest of the UK us as world leaders in reducing carbon emissions. Now the consequences appear, entirely predictable, and emphasised in the past by Scientific Alliance Scotland, which has pointed to the dangers of not recognising that electricity price determines usage and that electricity is the lifeblood of our advanced economy. Generating policy needs to be taken out of the hands of politicians since they use it for their own political purposes instead of for the benefit of all of us. The attitude of this particular Government here that has banned nuclear, fracking and synthetic gas for its own political purposes, is a clear indictment.
The old Central Electricity Generating Board, banished by Margaret Thatcher but run by independent scientists and engineers, always looked 30 years ahead and would have avoided these evident problems that will continue to worsen.
Professsor Tony Trewavas,
Scientific Alliance Scotland, 7-9 North St David Street, Edinburgh.
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