Chinese imports contributed to the fall of Electric Glass Fiber UK, not a rare phenomenon when it comes to Europe’s green energy.
One of the characteristic failings of central planners is an inability to, so to speak, connect the dots. As they draw up their directives, they rarely succeed in thinking through how putting them into practice will work in the real world. They also tend be reluctant to accept the need to set priorities, or, for that matter, accept trade-offs.
Britain’s reckless net zero experiment may be a disaster, but at least it is providing educational opportunity after educational opportunity to see how dysfunctional central planning can be. Determined to outdo the climatist zealotry of its hapless Conservative predecessors, Britain’s Labour government is set on decarbonizing all but a scrap of the country’s electricity (the scrap was a concession) by 2030, a counterproductive deadline designed to create that sense of urgency without which central planning’s greatest follies would be incomplete.
The speed of this decarbonization (and the size of the levies imposed alongside it) has ensured that British electricity costs are even higher than was always likely to be the case with any green “transition.” That’s tricky, as Labour, like the Tories, has promised to oversee a green industrial revolution.
A green industrial revolution that involved making things (as opposed to, say, hiring more regulators) was going to have to be powered, but what happens if other green policies are pushing up the price of that power?
Let’s just say it doesn’t help.
A major supplier to Britain’s green energy industry is set to close after its Japanese owner failed to clinch a rescue deal for the company and its 250 workers.
Wigan-based Electric Glass Fiber UK (EGFU), which is owned by Nippon Electric Glass (NEG), makes vital components used in wind turbines and electric cars. Its closure puts net zero supply chains under threat.
It blamed competition from Chinese imports as well as the rising cost of raw materials, in financial statements published in last year, which could only be partially passed on to customers in the form of higher prices.
The business also said rising energy prices were putting pressure on operations. . . .
The Office for National Statistics has said the UK has some of the world’s highest industrial energy prices. High gas prices and green levies such as the climate change levy, renewables obligation and feed-in tariffs have added to energy bills.
Note the contribution to the fall of EGFU made by Chinese imports, not a rare phenomenon when it comes to Europe’s green energy. By selling components for this sector at prices that owe more to mercantilism than the market, China gives a false impression of renewables’ affordability (thus helping entice Europe’s political class to force their adoption) while crushing domestic competition. The result is to create an energy dependency on China where none existed before. That’s hard to square with the claim by Britain’s climate zealots that net zero means that Britain will no longer have to rely for its energy on “foreign dictators.”
Meanwhile, via the Financial Times:
The Trump administration has raised concerns with the UK government over plans by one of China’s largest wind turbine makers to supply North Sea wind farms from a new factory in Scotland.
A US official told the Financial Times that Washington had warned London about what it argues are national security risks attached to allowing Mingyang to build a plant in the UK.
The US intervention comes as British ministers review whether they should block the factory, amid questions raised by politicians over cyber security and the danger of being over reliant on Chinese technology.