By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
A welcome voice of common sense!
Much of industry needs plentiful supplies of low cost energy. Industry is about transforming basic materials taken from the earth into materials, and then cutting, shaping and assembling these into manufactured goods. Transformation of silica into glass or iron ore into steel or oil into plastic requires very large amounts of heat energy. Creating components and final products from materials requires substantial energy to cut, shape, bend, bolt, glue and assemble.
The UK following EU rules and guidance has decided on a dear energy policy. Unsurprisingly this has triggered de industrialisation. The government says it has an industrial strategy, but its energy policy makes it more and more likely that industry will gravitate to cheap energy USA or lower cost China than stay at home. In the name of decarbonising our industry we will end up importing more industrial products from countries that burn as much or more carbon per unit of output but at cheaper prices. We have already lost most of our aluminium industry from this problem, and seen a big reduction in our steel industry and petrochemical capacity.
Read his full post here.