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Institute for Public Policy Research FORGING THE FUTURE A VISION FOR NORTHERN STEEL’S NET ZERO TRANSFORMATION Jonathan Webb April 2021 ABOUT IPPR NORTH IPPR North is the dedicated think tank for the north of England, with bases in Manchester and Newcastle. IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research, is the UK’s leading progressive think tank. We are an independent charitable organisation with our main office in London. Our primary purpose is to conduct and promote research into, and the education of the public in, the economic, social and political sciences, science and technology, the voluntary sector and social enterprise, public services, and industry and commerce. Other purposes include to advance physical and mental health, the efficiency of public services and environmental protection or improvement; and to relieve poverty, unemployment, or those in need by reason of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship, or other disadvantage. E: [email protected] www.ippr.org/north Registered charity no: 800065 (England and Wales), SC046557 (Scotland) This paper was first published in April 2021. © IPPR 2021 The contents and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author only. The progressive policy think tank CONTENTS Summary ..........................................................................................................................3 Introduction ....................................................................................................................6 1. Northern steel matters ............................................................................................7 The need for an industry transformation ...................................................8 Ensuring a just transition ...............................................................................9 Why a future for steel matters for levelling up ........................................9 2. A plan for decarbonising steel .............................................................................12 A sector pathway for decarbonisation ..................................................... 12 Resource efficiency........................................................................................ 14 Electrification ................................................................................................. 15 Harnessing the power of hydrogen ............................................................ 16 Carbon capture and storage ........................................................................ 16 A timeline for decarbonisation ...................................................................17 3. A new era for the steel industry in the North ..................................................18 A new era for northern steel ....................................................................... 18 South Yorkshire and Derbyshire ................................................................. 18 The Humber, North Yorkshire, and North Lincolnshire ..........................20 North East ...................................................................................................... 21 4. Policies to support decarbonising and industry growth .............................23 Investing to decarbonise the industry: Core costs ................................ 23 R&D to accelerate the development of low-carbon industrial clusters ...25 A just transition fund ....................................................................................26 Creating a market for low-carbon steel ...................................................28 Ensuring that future negotiations place a premium on low-carbon steel ........................................................................................28 Freeports and inward investment .............................................................29 Developing domestic demand through local procurement ...................29 Conclusion .......................................................................................................29 5. A net zero vision for northern steel .................................................................. 30 Strategic direction and investing in northern steel ...............................30 Making the most of northern devolution ................................................. 31 A just transition.............................................................................................. 32 Creating demand for low-carbon northern steel .................................... 33 References ....................................................................................................................34 IPPR NORTH | Forging the future A vision for northern steel's net zero transformation 1 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Jonathan Webb is a senior research fellow at IPPR North. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the steel industry, academic institutions, trade unionists and policymakers who attended the roundtables as part of this project. Their insights were informative. Additional thanks go to Wilf Lytton for providing insights and data for this research. Special thanks as well to IPPR colleagues Sarah Longlands, Joshua Emden, Carsten Jung, Marcus Johns and Carys Roberts for their helpful input, as well as Abi Hynes and Richard Maclean for an excellent job in designing this report. The European Climate Foundation (ECF) generously funded this work. Download This document is available to download as a free PDF and in other formats at: http://www.ippr.org/research/publications/forging-the-future Citation If you are using this document in your own writing, our preferred citation is: Webb J (2020) Forging the future: A vision for northern steel's net zero transformation, IPPR North. http://www.ippr.org/research/publications/forging-the-future Permission to share This document is published under a creative commons licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ For commercial use, please contact [email protected] 2 IPPR NORTH | Forging the future A vision for northern steel's net zero transformation SUMMARY The steel industry underpins the economies and identities of many towns and city regions across the North. Despite this, in the spring 2021 budget, the chancellor referred to steel as an industry of the past. This perception fails to realise the important role steel will play in both supporting the North’s economy and the UK’s wider transition to a low-carbon future. With the pursuit of the right technologies now and investment to create a competitive low-carbon steel industry, northern steel, as a foundational industry, can be central to the country’s prosperity in the decades to come. This great transformation can offer something more hopeful; a cleaner, greener future for the steel industry. In turn, this will support prosperous towns and communities, providing the prospect of a good life for the people who live there. If we are serious about levelling up, we must begin to recast steel as an industry of the future. With a proper decarbonisation plan, the North’s steel industry can not only achieve net zero emissions; it can also transform its competitiveness to become a world leader in the low-carbon steel market. None of this can be achieved without the right support or policy plans in place. There are major technological questions that need to be confronted, and policies to increase the demand for low-carbon northern steel need to be articulated. With a vision in place for the transition to net zero northern steel, the government’s levelling up agenda can be provided with fresh impetus. Alongside recent announcements on a northern economic campus and the UK infrastructure bank, decarbonising steel can help build the North’s economy and raise prosperity. Getting the correct policies in place can empower the steel industry to drive forward decarbonisation. KEY FINDINGS The UK steel industry is of national strategic importance. It employs approximately 32,000 people directly, with a further 52,000 people employed in its supply chain. Its direct contribution to the UK economy is £2 billion a year. Future market opportunities worth over £3.8 billion a year could be available by 2030. Over one-third of the industry’s jobs and a significant number of steel producers are based in the north of England. As a result, the North has a unique opportunity to lead the UK’s production of zero carbon steel. This report shows that there are clear opportunities from decarbonising the industry. A drive towards zero carbon steel would not just protect existing jobs; a modern and competitive industry would also attract new investment that can create new business opportunities, jobs, and wealth within the North. To achieve this transformation, significant barriers need to be overcome. The negative perception of steel as a sunset industry persists and this has meant that there is a lack of forward planning for decarbonisation. To address this, we outline a comprehensive plan for decarbonising northern steel. In doing so, we propose a mix of resource efficiency, electrification, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage technologies to decarbonise northern steel. We examine how this decarbonisation approach would play out across key industrial clusters located in Yorkshire and the Humber, as well as the North East. IPPR NORTH | Forging the future A vision for northern steel's net zero transformation 3 We estimate the annual cost of decarbonising northern steel to be approximately £267 million by 2050.