UK Wind Turbines Should Use UK Steel

_{Image source: American Iron & Steel Institute}

UK steel producers risk being “locked out” of the offshore wind supply chain, it has been claimed, with British metal making up only 2pc of existing turbines.

According to industry officials, domestic manufacturers could supply as much as 86pc of the steel needed to build Britain’s offshore wind turbines, but casting and rolling mills require huge investment to make this a possibility.

The UK’s home turbine market could be worth as much as £21 billion over the next quarter century.

Master Cutler Phil Rodrigo, the figurehead of the 401-year-old Cutler’s Company, a guild representing Sheffield’s steel firms, said this “must change”.  

“Every wind farm put up is not consuming UK steel, or if it is, it’s one or two per cent,” he told journalist Richard Marsden, of the financial publication This Is Money.

“We should stipulate using British-produced steel in turbines, housings and casings.”

And trade body UK Steel fears underinvestment in fabrication and production facilities is “locking the UK out of a multi-billion-pound economic opportunity”.

The heavily subsidised sector could also secure thousands of skilled jobs, contributing to the 100,000 workers needed in the next five years to fulfil Ed Miliband’s ambitious net-zero targets.

By Edward Peters

Source: 4C Offshore