'The crisis facing the British steel industry is neither new nor sudden. On the contrary, it has been developing in plain sight for months and even years, if not for decades. In that sense, this week’s decision by Tata Steel to pull out of all its UK operations is simply the latest in a long series of blows that have reduced Britain’s steel industry from the world leader to the fifth largest producer within the European Union.

Tata’s decision is nevertheless a body blow to steel in the UK, with wide industrial and political implications. The threat to 4,000 jobs at the UK’s largest steelworks at Port Talbot, a community which is synonymous with the steel industry today in the way Jarrow was with the shipyards a century ago, is existential. But the closure of Tata’s plants, if it goes ahead, could threaten at least 40,000 jobs nationwide and help to make a mockery of the “active and sustained industrial strategy” which George Osborne advocated as recently as last November.

It would be foolish to pretend that there would be no problem facing steelmaking in Britain that determined state intervention could not solve. Global market power in steel production has shifted decisively to China, while decades of underinvestment and a long-term decline in UK steel’s international competitiveness cannot simply be dismissed as unimportant, least of all at a time when public money remains tight. Tata, after all, is a company with a record of trying to take the long view. It invested in a new blast furnace at Port Talbot. But steel’s cost base, especially the prices it had to pay for energy, left it vulnerable to the glut that has followed the slowdown of the Chinese economy. China’s readiness to unload steel on global markets at marginal cost knocked the floor out of the industry elsewhere, including in the UK.'

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/30/the-guardian-view-on-tata-steels-pull-out-a-national-summons-to-get-serious

Green energy coming to you. All it will do is move the carbon footprint.

the greens will be cheering

The Japanese always had high energy prices but this didn't close down their steelworks. When the going got tough they evolved into specialty steels, high quality, high margin steel instead of just producing pig iron.

The British appear to be a sad case in manufacturing. They almost had a motor industry until the Japanese produced higher quality cheaper cars.

Now all the British can hope for is the Australian model of servicing each other for a pound instead of actually manufacturing something.

In fact it is a failure of British governments in not fostering technological development. The British almost made it in a number of technological endeavors. However any Brit with talent is heading elsewhere because the pay is so low in UK talented people are working for beer money.

With Green Energy there won't be any energy intensive manufacturing. Pushing costs onto a smaller and smaller base.

All they need is a few solar panels on the roof, problem solved  ;D