Electricity prices play a big part in failure of steel sector – Herald (letters)

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.