IN YOUR OPINION

摘要

Our poll on this emotive topic attracted responses from 2500 individuals with 47% voting for the plan to be scrapped and 53% believing it should be given the go ahead. The poll also attracted a high number of comments, the majority from engineers spelling out the importance of coking coal for steel production. I worked in the steel industry for many years and fully understand that this is coking coal used to make coke that is, in turn, used to make Iron in a blast furnace. There is no economic alternative method. Perhaps people who voted yes might like to close the UK steel industry altogether. Then, the steel will be made in China, the C02 will still go up the chimney and thousands of British jobs go down the pan! Good thinking. There are alternative sources of carbon for steelmaking now, and likely to be more in the future. The UK should fund research into these and generate licence income to the IP from steelmakers around the world. Even if coke is required in the short term and has to be imported, it is better to get it from an existing mine rather than set up a new one which needs many years to pay back the return on investment, so locks UK steelmakers into old technology.