UK Steel backs select committee’s decarbonisation criticisms
10 Mar 2026
UK climate ambitions cannot be met unless energy intensive industries are able to remain competitive while decarbonising, the head of UK Steel warned.
The organisation’s director general Gareth Stace was talking after parliament’s environmental audit committee delivered its report on government preparations for implementing the country’s seventh carbon budget (SB7).
UK Steel said the select committee’s report echoed its own concerns about uncompetitive electricity prices, removal of free allocations and a “weak” CBAM – carbon border adjustment mechanism, for equalising carbon prices between domestic and imported products.
The committee has warned against confusing decarbonisation with deindustrialisation, saying the UK could not resort to offshoring industrial production in its efforts to meet carbon budget limits.
Said Stace: “This report could not be clearer: decarbonisation must not mean deindustrialisation. A strong domestic steel sector is essential not only for our economic resilience, but for genuine, measurable progress towards the UK’s climate goals.
High electricity prices together with a weak carbon border policy remained the “single biggest barrier” to low carbon steelmaking, he added.
“British steel can and will decarbonise, but only if the Government creates the right conditions to invest here in the UK,” insisted Stace.
