Mastodawn

Jonathan Schofield

The UK is trumpeting #rail200: the 200th anniversary of the railway. As @markhburton points out, that’s a bit premature: https://mstdn.social/@markhburton/113803780435711720

But I want to re-up Kris de Dekker’s lens.

If we were serious about constructing a low carbon economy, we’d acknowledge, soberly, that we have a steel problem:

“The global iron and steel industry consumes more energy and produces more carbon emissions than any other industry.”

Some notes from Kris’s excellent analysis follow…

Mark Burton (@[email protected])

2025 is being celebrated as the 200th anniversary of the birth of the passenger railway. A bit premature, although there was a one-off excursion on the Stockton and Darlington railway, with passengers traveling on coal wagons, the regular passenger service from 1825-1830 used horse-drawn coaches. In 1830, the Liverpool Manchester railway opened, the first connecting 2 cities and the first scheduled passenger service. Stockton and Darlington Railway - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway #rail200

Mastodon 🐘

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

…I love rail travel.

Unfortunately, at some point we have to face up to the fact that, although we started out with steel cars powered along steel rails by coal, and then had steel cars powered along steel rails by diesel, we’re now committed to only having steel cars powered along steel rails by electricity.

And steel is made with coal.

“The solution seems obvious: let’s produce all that steel in electric arc furnaces. However, this is impossible. There’s not enough scrap available…”

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

…because “the continuous growth of global steel output makes a circular flow of resources impossible.

It takes decades before most steel becomes available for recycling. For example, there is 543 Mt of steel stocked in ships. The scrap available for recycling in 2021 corresponds to the production level of 1965 when global steel production was less than one-quarter of what it is today (450 Mt)…”

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

…“Consequently, the other three quarters [of global steel demand] needs to be produced in blast furnaces using coal and freshly mined iron ore.”

The above quotes are from https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/03/how-to-escape-from-the-iron-age/

How to Escape From the Iron Age?

We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.

LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

…Everyone who is betting on the rhetoric of the energy transition should read Kris’s tour of our steel predicament, because if what we have is a plan that *cannot work*, that’s a problem, right?

Kris goes into

- the level of steel demand
- the proliferation of grades of steel (over 2,500 different types)
- the relationship with renewable energy, especially wind power
- the magical thinking of hydrogen…

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

…Kris observes:

“A 14 MW offshore wind turbine has a steel intensity that is almost 50 times higher than a fossil fuel power plant for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.”

Before arriving at what to
me seems like an inevitable conclusion:

“adjust steel production to the available scrap supply both in quantity and quality. That would allow us to produce all steel from scrap in electric arc furnaces, dramatically reducing energy consumption and eliminating almost all carbon emissions.”

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

…My instinct is that, because we are on a rail road of growth, we will explore every possible branch line of magical thinking before taking Kris seriously

https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/113134888351348909

Grah am Jan z Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman a slowed down economy opens the possibility for slow forms of travel, like long distance walking. Walk a thousand kms this way, a thousand kms that way, live on the road. Our socio-ecological problems arise from our tendency of staying put and accumulating of things. The law of the road is that you can't take more than you are willing to carry. Yeah, this view is out of touch with most people, but maybe it will catch on :~D

Brian Smith Sep 28, 2025

@urlyman
Before we jump up and down too much on steel, How does it compare with concrete and Tarmac on roads, in terms of full life cycle costs and emissions?

Jonathan Schofield Sep 28, 2025

@BrianSmith950 Steel certainly has high reusability. I’m not jumping on it as such. I liked what the steel in my road bike enabled very much before it got trashed by a bigger mass of steel being driven into it.

The thing I’m constantly trying to highlight is

a) We do things that have emissions which we think don’t matter but *really really do*

b) Because we think they don’t matter we build millions of lifestyles on that basis, even as it becomes obvious they cannot go on at that scale

MatthewToadAgain Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman The best way to reduce use of steel, energy, and mining in general is to switch to public transport rather than replacing every car with an EV. 😀

We have easily enough steel and other mined resources for rail and buses. For cars, that's less clear.

MatthewToadAgain Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman And as for turbines, the UK government estimate is 25 million tonnes of steel *TOTAL* from 2026 to 2050 for wind turbines.

Which is two and a half years of scrap!

Martin Vermeer (not Jesus)Sep 27, 2025

@MatthewToadAgain @urlyman And don't forget electric bikes. They don't just substitute muscle bikes but also cars!

MatthewToadAgain Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman There is a hell of a lot of scrap available that we're not using right now. The total UK scrap supply is about 10 million tonnes per annum, of which we use about 2.5. Most of the rest is exported, sure. But we could build several more arc furnaces.

Steel for rails in particular is often made via arc furnaces, while some other uses need "virgin" steel.

Meanwhile, where you actually need virgin steel, large scale direct reduction from hydrogen, using electricity from renewables, is not only possible, there are at least four plants under construction.

Granted there are difficulties with hydrogen; electrolysis doesn't like running below 50% capacity, for instance, and most of the H2 leaks (greenhouse gas) come from starting and stopping.

In any case annual demand for steel for rails is about 80,000 tonnes (UK). That's a fraction of overall steel demand.

Steel is indeed a problem. But we can provide the steel needed for rail.

The problem with building new rail lines is that 1) it tends to go through important habitats, 2) it tends to take decades, 3) it tends to cost tens of billions and 4) if any modal shift actually occurs, it can lead to further emissions in other sectors (i.e. we need to close down airports at the same time).

If it's done right it can still make a meaningful contribution to the transition. For instance we need a low-speed line from Birmingham out to Crewe to make HS2's capacity gains on rail freight actually materialise.

MatthewToadAgain Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman Comparing this to other modes of transport:

Improving bus travel can be deployed quickly at a modest cost. Depending on the roads, it may compete with traffic. Electric buses are typically not any heavier than the current hybrids, but are quieter, more comfortable and lower maintenance, and already make up 23% of the global fleet. So it's a win/win, but it doesn't eliminate the need for rail, especially for freight.

70% or so of orders for new ferries (short haul, up to a few hundred miles) are already electric. Cheaper batteries will make it feasible up to at least 3000km. And 40% of global shipping is for fossil fuels.

Meanwhile the situation with aviation is *much* less promising.

And then there are cars. Which use far more steel than public transport. And energy, pollution in all senses, space etc. By one credible projection, **half** of the total mining needed for the transition is for EV batteries.

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@MatthewToadAgain In terms of direction of travel I agree with all that. But if we’re going concertedly there at all, we’re also travelling towards a train of consequences that’s on the same line with no off-rail in between

MatthewToadAgain Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman Yeah, it's another "green growth is going to be harder than you think, we need degrowth".

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@MatthewToadAgain ✊💚

Nick Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman Was just discussing your thread with my son, who is a structural engineer. He tells me the other issue with recycling steel in electric arc furnaces is that currently the end product isn’t as tough, so has more limited uses.

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@pythoneer yes, Kris in his article:

“Although higher quality steels can be produced in electric arc furnaces, they’re not made from scrap, and have much higher energy use.

Steel available for recycling forms a mix of steel grades. That mix is suitable for making plain carbon steel but not highly alloyed steels, which require scrap with similar qualities. However, that scrap is not available. For example, stainless steel, the most produced special steel grade, has a recycling rate of only 15%”

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@pythoneer …“The low recycling rate and the need for the extraction of additional elements such as chrome and nickel make higher grades of steel more energy-intensive to produce. For example, stainless steel production requires almost 80 GJ per ton, four times more than the production of plain carbon steel. The continuous development of higher-grade steels is stimulated by environmental legislation (such as the use of lighter steel in cars)” … ironically making “steel less and less sustainable”

MidgePhoto Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman @markhburton
Something has to be largest.
Steel and Iron is persistent once out of the ground/furnace, and I think as electricity becomes superabundant the recycling of steel is going to reduce its contribution to CO2.
But chipping away at it is a good work.

#steel #CO2 #electricity #coke

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@Photo55 sure. But we’re not really in a chipping away time window. And unfortunately markets are disinterested because they are structurally engineered to be overwhelmingly attentive to the next 3 months.

So what will very probably happen is massive unplanned and unintended contraction. Tough to say exactly why and when. But then we’ll start thinking differently because we’ll have no choice

MidgePhoto Sep 27, 2025

@urlyman @markhburton
I don't think a maker or seller of steel has any intrinsic desire to burn coal/coke.
Given the opportunity they'll melt metal with electricity, remove oxygen with hydrogen, and take carbon out of iron by magic.
I expect sellers of coal will be working hard against electricity generation by any other means.

Me, I'll cheerfully have electrolytic Titanium and Aluminium components and vehicles, wooden stairs held together by locking peg joints and glue, and so on.

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@Photo55 @markhburton

We’ll definitely accelerate the alternative processes. And that’s good.

The point I’m trying to draw out from Kris’s article – which seems to me pretty thorough and credible – is that the predicament is not addressable solely from the supply side. The mismatch of scale (vast) and time available within which to achieve it (small) is too great. There *has* to be a demand side part to the plan as well.

And crucially…

Jonathan Schofield Sep 27, 2025

@Photo55 @markhburton …even as time fritters away, demand side management cannot be countenanced because it’s too inconvenient for the vacuous political rhetoric of GDP growth.

And thermodynamics doesn’t give a stuff about convenience

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@urlyman @markhburton I wrote about this four years ago. We're really going to struggle, in the medium term, for sufficient structural materials, especially steel, and we cannot, as a society, afford to be profliigate with it.

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2021-08-18-wheres-the-steel/

There's a researcher called Simon Michaux who has done a lot of work on this.

Where's the Steel?

From the discovery of iron working techniques, about 3,200 years ago, up until the widespread exploitation of fossil fuels, about 250 years ago, iron and steel were rare, precious materials. The average person, across the whole world, almost certainly had less than 500 grammes of it. A knife, probably; some tool of their trade, possibly. Even members of the elite — warriors who fought in full armour, for example — probably owned no more than 30kg of iron and steel.The use of fossil fuel changed all that, of course. There's about one car for every two people in the UK, and the average car now weighs 1857Kg, so that's almost a ton per person in cars alone, not to mention all the steel we now have in buildings and infrastructure. But it's fossil fuels that have made that possible. In future, we can't use them. So how much steel will we have?

The Fool on the Hill

Jonathan Schofield Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke thanks. Will read. Yes I have some familiarity with Michaux’s work (which wider society seems culturally determined to ignore)

https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111374066310651684

Mark Burton Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke @urlyman
And Valero, A., Valero, A., & Calvo, G. (2021). The Material Limits of Energy Transition: Thanatia. Springer
International Publishing AG. ISBN (ebook) 978-3-030-78533-8
The UKFIRES Report 'Absolute Zero' is also good and concise on steel. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/33aaf353-b7de-45b0-9c40-5f62975b2127

Absolute Zero

We can’t wait for breakthrough technologies to deliver net-zero emissions by 2050. Instead, we can plan to respond to climate change using today’s technologies with incremental change. This will reveal many opportunities for growth but requires a public discussion about future lifestyles.

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@markhburton @urlyman See, that report is all simple common sense, and yet no political party -- not even the bloody #Greens -- are even trying to sell this vision. It's a good vision, it would work, and if we adopt it RIGHT NOW there is (just) still time.

Why isn't ANYONE pushing this?

Mark Burton Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke @urlyman Indeed.
We used it in the Getting Real report. Sent a year ago (if my MP's office did what they said they had) to approx 80 potentially sympathetic parliamentarians and separately to policy people, not one of whom even acknowledged it
https://gettingreal.org.uk/full-report/

Full Report | Getting Real about the Crises Facing the UK

Read the full report The pdf version will open in your browser or pdf reader. Or Download the print version Complete wit

Getting Real about the Crises Facing the UK

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@markhburton @urlyman (I do wish people would publish these documents as HTML, which can be read on literally any device including paper, instead of PDF which is basically unreadable unless printed)

Mark Burton Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke @urlyman
A fair point, the summary is in html. The report is long but I can look at doing an alternative html version - easy enough to do.

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@markhburton @urlyman what's depressing is that if we use the early production of 'green' steel to make more electric arc smelting plant and new green electricity infrastructure, then the amount of green steel we will be able to smelt (from existing scrap) will ramp up quickly, then the resource poverty gap (where we have far less quality structural material than we're used to) will be relatively short...

/Continued

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@markhburton @urlyman but in a #capitalist economy that precious green steel is being squandered on #AI data centres, SUVs, armaments and ballrooms, and consequently the rollout of the infrastructure needed to give us a sustainable future is being sabotaged.

#ClimateEmergency
#Sustainability
#Solarpunk

Mark Burton Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke @urlyman

So here you are - html version. And I learned a new trick!
https://gettingreal.org.uk/getting-real-full-report-html/

Getting Real: full report (html) | Getting Real about the Crises Facing the UK

Getting Real about the Crises Facing the UK

Michael Edwards Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke @markhburton @urlyman
Sorry but I read a lot of PDFs. Why do you say they are 'basically unreadable'…??

Jonathan Schofield Sep 28, 2025

@MichaelLondonSF

IMO Simon’s statement is a cry of anguish more than measured. But I am with him in spirit because:

- PDFs are generally deeply inaccessible (it is very rare that they are well-made from that standpoint)
- from a viewport perspective, PDFs are entirely unable to adapt to the available width
- PDFs consume way more bandwidth than HTML equivalents

They are good at the purpose for which the PDF standard was conceived and terrible for everything else

@simon_brooke @markhburton

Michael Edwards Sep 28, 2025

@urlyman @markhburton @simon_brooke ok thanks

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@MichaelLondonSF @urlyman @markhburton This is what the HTML version of Mark's report looks like on my screen. I've applied a basic stylesheet of my own choosing, and can consequently read without the glare of a white screen or the eye strain of absurdly small fonts.

You may not like my choice of stylesheet, but that's fine -- you can provide your own. But I ask you, honestly, is this not easier to read than the PDF?

https://gettingreal.org.uk/getting-real-full-report-html/

Mark Burton Sep 28, 2025

@simon_brooke @MichaelLondonSF @urlyman
Interesting is personal taste - I always switch everything to black font on white ground!

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@markhburton @MichaelLondonSF @urlyman which works for many people; it's not my preference. But that is the delight of the web; it enables us to all read the same texts, but each in a format we individually find conducive to easy reading.

Mark Burton Sep 28, 2025

@urlyman @MichaelLondonSF @simon_brooke
It's true - they can be a mess on a screen - especially if they've been made with a 2-page spread, in which case they aren't readable.
For readability I nearly always use big fonts and sans serif fonts.

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@MichaelLondonSF @markhburton @urlyman Because I read on a screen, and it is overwhelmingly more convenient for me to read a single galley of text than to continue to have to move the document left and right, up and down, to read double or triple galleyed pages, let alone documents that are laid out as left and right hand pages. I also often prefer to apply my own stylesheets to documents so that I don't have to struggle with someone else's taste in fonts.

Michael Edwards Oct 6, 2025

@simon_brooke @markhburton @urlyman
I'm learning a lot from this exchange. Thanks everyone.
My only achievement in life was protesting so much (on twitter) about the 4-col PDF version of the Planning White Paper (England) that the government rushed out a single column version.
(4 cols had clearly been envisaged as for printing double page spreads)

⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️Sep 28, 2025

@MichaelLondonSF @simon_brooke @markhburton @urlyman they don't reflow to my device width, adopt my fonts or colors. Also the vast majority of academic ones seem to be two columns per page which should be illegal for something on the web

LonM Sep 28, 2025

@falken @MichaelLondonSF @simon_brooke @markhburton @urlyman I echo this - recently I have started to find reading on a led screen kind of eye straining for long periods of time and I prefer to push long form writing to my ereader or enabling my browser's reader mode. But PDFs don't work with reader modes, and scaling an A4 sheet down to an A5 display means either I have to faff around with trimming margins and splitting columns or zooming and panning the page on an ereader with a slow refresh rate.

Simon Brooke Sep 28, 2025

@markhburton @urlyman
"if we continue today’s impressive rates of growth in non-emitting generation, we’ll only have to cut our use of energy to 60% of today’s levels. We can achieve this with incremental changes to the way we use energy: we can drive smaller cars and take the train when possible, use efficient electric heat-pumps to keep warm and buy buildings, vehicles and equipment that are better designed and last much longer"

#ClimateEmergency

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/33aaf353-b7de-45b0-9c40-5f62975b2127

Absolute Zero

We can’t wait for breakthrough technologies to deliver net-zero emissions by 2050. Instead, we can plan to respond to climate change using today’s technologies with incremental change. This will reveal many opportunities for growth but requires a public discussion about future lifestyles.