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US energy secretary Chris Wright has warned that Britain’s green policies have resulted in “higher prices and fewer jobs” for its economy, as the UK government finalises its industrial strategy and continues to move away from oil and gas.
“We have outsourced far too much manufacturing, and our allies in Europe have gone much further in this destructive direction,” Wright told a crowd of oil and gas executives at S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference in Houston on Monday.
“I find it sad and a bit ironic that the once mighty steel and petrochemical industries of the United Kingdom have been displaced to Asia, where the same products will be produced with higher greenhouse gas emissions, then loaded on a diesel powered ship back to the United Kingdom.”
He added: “The net result is higher prices and fewer jobs for UK citizens, higher global greenhouse gas emissions, and all of this is termed a climate policy?”
The warning comes as President Donald Trump reverses US actions on climate and threatens its closest trade partners with sweeping tariffs as part of his plan to reindustrialise.
The UK is preparing to finalise its industrial strategy later this year. Britain’s steel production has steadily fallen since its peak in the 1970s, dropping to 5.6mn tonnes in 2023. A recent report from S&P Global Commodity Insights warned that the UK chemicals sector was in “steady decline” and “drifting towards the most unfavourable scenario” due to high prices and low demand growth.
Wright’s comments echo warnings from executives that higher energy prices in Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have rendered its industrial sector uncompetitive.
“The data is all telling us that if urgent action doesn’t happen quickly, that the competitiveness moves to places like the US, like the Middle East, like Asia,” Wael Sawan, chief executive of Shell, told executives at the same conference.
“Europe is waking up to the fact that it’s hollowed out its industrial base,” said Michael Wirth, chief executive of Chevron, the second-largest US oil major, on his panel.
Last month, Trump slapped 25 per cent tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminium, a move that the UK steel industry has warned would be “devastating.”
UK business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds vowed to “stand up” for the British steel industry and warned that retaliatory measures “already exist” in an interview with the Financial Times last week.
UK electricity prices are among the highest in Europe and expected to rise 5 per cent from April due to a surge in wholesale energy prices. Energy bill arrears are at record levels as households struggle with the soaring cost of living.
https://www.ft.com/content/7d858b98-23d0-4357-93fa-05779c2d9afe
