The UK’s Net-Zero Lead May Slowly Slip Away
Messy election-year politics and growing protectionism everywhere threaten to derail the nation’s energy transition.
Tata Steel’s Port Talbot switch is fueling tensions.
Photographer: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
As a boy traveling through Wales on summer trips to Ireland, I could tell I was passing the town of Port Talbot from the stench of sulfur. The giant steelworks there was once a symbol of the UK in its industrial prime, more recently its decline — and now, possibly, its renewal. After years of losses, the plant’s blast furnaces will close this fall. In three years’ time, a new electric-arc steel furnace is due to start up there; with fewer jobs, but also less pollution, including from carbon dioxide.
Whether the home of the original Industrial Revolution can provide any leadership in our 21st century green version is an increasingly fraught question. That’s not merely due to the world’s slow progress on decarbonization, but also because such leadership has become tied to great power rivalries. More immediately, a potentially pivotal UK general election, one that could have significant consequences for energy and climate policy, looms on July 4.