UK could be at forefront of green Industrial Revolution with carbon cluster plans – and here’s why
If you crack open a bottle of something – be it wine, water or soft drinks – over the festive season, there’s a good chance the glass came from the Encirc factory in Cheshire.
Here, on the banks of the River Mersey, you will find one of the world’s largest glass factories. They take sand from Norfolk, soda ash created from the salt sitting beneath the Cheshire countryside and a lot of recycled glass and throw it into two of the biggest glass furnaces in the world.
There, in the furnace, at temperatures of around 1,600 degrees centigrade, the sand melts and becomes a liquid river of molten glass. It is a chemical reaction humans learnt thousands of years ago, but here at Encirc it’s carried out on a gargantuan scale.
This factory alone produces two billion bottles and containers a year, a number which is hard to process, until you note that it includes around 40% of all the wine bottles consumed in the UK.
That includes a significant proportion of all the New World wines we consume here, by the way. Mostly, the wine from Australia, California and Chile arrives not pre-bottled, but in large bags inside shipping containers, which are then emptied into metal vats at Encirc, from where they are pumped into bottles made here in the UK.
It’s an extraordinary site – a place which says a lot both about our appetite for liquids (both alcoholic and not) and our ability to turn raw materials into sophisticated products.
The struggle to get to net zero
But turning sand into glass is an enormously energy intensive process. Some of the heat in the furnace can be created by electric elements which heat the bottom of this enormous oven. But glassmakers like Encirc say it’s impossible to do what they do – making glass on a vast scale – without blasting that furnace with a very hot flame.
At the moment that flame is produced using methane – natural gas – with the upshot that this glassmaking facility produces rather a lot of carbon dioxide. And even if you could find a way of running their furnace without a naked flame it would still be producing a sizeable amount of CO2, since some of it derives from the chemical reaction as sand turns into glass.
In short, this glass factory is a pretty good illustration of how tricky it is to get to net zero. Much of the energy use in this country can be shifted from fossil fuels to green electricity – whether that’s vehicles or home heating. Sometimes the cost will be high; sometimes in the long run, going green will be cheaper than the status quo.
But for a handful of important industries it’s far, far harder. Glassmaking is one of those industries. You can run small furnaces on electric power but not the big ones you need to feed a massive glass container factory like this one.
Read more from Sky News:
The key economic graphs that define 2023
Big differences in house prices changes across the UK
All of which is why they are seeking another alternative. The most obvious route to allow this plant to decarbonise is to replace those methane flames with hydrogen ones, and then to collect all the CO2 coming out of the chimney and sequester it below the ground.
And, as it happens, the technology is pretty much there. We know how to make hydrogen both from natural gas and from electricity (the former still involves some carbon emissions; the latter is extremely expensive, so these options are not without their issues). We know how to capture carbon dioxide.
But there’s a couple of problems which have always deterred businesses like this from taking the leap. The first is that it hasn’t made any economic sense. Capturing carbon is expensive, so why do it when it’s cheaper to pay for carbon credits and carry on burning gas?
Location, location, location
The second is that the infrastructure isn’t yet there. Right now if you collected carbon dioxide from your chimney, there’s nowhere to put it. Someone needs to lay the pipes out to the depleted gas reservoirs under the sea where we might be able to store it. That’s also expensive.
All of which brings us to one of the least discussed, but arguably most important topics in the green energy transition: clusters. In short, if businesses like this glassmaker are going to green it is far more likely to happen if they can do so alongside other heavy industry players.
Look at the geography of the UK’s industries and the idea makes quite a lot of sense. Many of the country’s biggest polluters happen to be clustered relatively near each other on the coast. Alongside Encirc you’ll find one of the country’s biggest oil refineries, as well as the Inovyn (part of Ineos) chemicals plant, not to mention a major gas power station and, some miles further away in North Wales, a cement manufacturer.
All of these businesses have big energy demands. They would all benefit either from carbon capture or hydrogen. Squint a little bit into the future and you can envisage a world where they share pipes both taking the carbon away and delivering the hydrogen.
How to make it happen?
But how to create these clusters? How to finance them? How to coordinate the businesses that all want to make profits while fulfilling their commitments to reduce or eliminate their carbon emissions?
It’s a question no one has yet been able satisfactorily to answer, but whoever does will have that most precious of things: a blueprint about how to decarbonise the trickiest bit of the world’s carbon budget.
And guess what: it so happens the UK is further ahead of most other countries around the world in planning its blueprint for clusters. It now has detailed plans for how to fund, construct and run a series of major clusters: one around the Encirc factory (the Net Zero North West Cluster Plan), another in the Tees Valley (Tees Valley Net Zero), as well as plans for Scotland, for the Humber, for the Black Country and South Wales.
An area where the UK is genuinely leading
Thanks in part to government funding, which began in 2019, Britain’s clusters expertise is admired far and wide. While the US is widely seen as having taken the lead on industrial decarbonisation, thanks to its enormous Inflation Reduction Act set of subsidies, Americans – and many from Europe – have been regularly visiting the UK to understand how to do clusters.
There are many areas where UK politicians claim (without much basis) to be world leaders, but here is an area where it does actually have a world-beating proficiency. However, the government funding for clusters is coming to an end in March, and those working here are nervous that this could be another area where the country squanders an early lead and soon becomes a laggard.
While the cluster in Cheshire looks likely to become a physical reality, with companies soon laying the pipes that will connect plans to hydrogen and carbon dioxide pipes, those in the Black Country and elsewhere are much less advanced.
It’s something to ponder as you have a drink over the festive season. It’s tempting to assume that Britain no longer makes much of anything any more. However, visit plants like the Encirc one, and you realise that that is very far off the mark.
And there’s a prospect that this country, which brought the world the Industrial Revolution, could be at the forefront of managing the green Industrial Revolution. In a few years’ time that glass could be truly low carbon – maybe in due course it could be zero carbon. But it will take a lot more work – especially on clusters – to make it a reality.
The UK economy “continued to slow” and recorded zero growth in July, according to official figures showing a big drag from manufacturers.
The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) followed a figure of 0.4% growth the previous month and negative growth of 0.1% in May.
Output of 0.3% was achieved over the April-June quarter as a whole, slowing from the 0.7% recorded over the first three months of 2025.
Money latest: Reaction as economy slows
The latest figures signal concern for the months ahead as the labour market slows and the effects of elevated inflation and the US trade war dampen demand.
Commenting on July’s activity, ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said that declines in production offset meagre growth in services and construction.
“Growth in the economy as a whole continued to slow over the last three months”, she said.
“While services growth held up, production fell back further.
“Within services, health, computer programming and office support services all performed well, while the falls in production were driven by broad based weakness across manufacturing industries.”
The Labour government made growing the economy its priority when taking office last summer but the chancellor admitted this week that it had become “stuck”.
The US trade war has proved a drag on activity globally this year but Rachel Reeves has also been accused of applying the brakes herself by plundering the private sector for cash since taking office, harming investment and employment in the process.
Employers reacted to a £40bn budget tax raid by cutting jobs and passing on rising costs to customers.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Tax rises playing ’50:50′ role in rising inflation
Inflation is currently running at almost double the Bank of England‘s 2% target, harming the prospects for future interest rate cuts.
Bank data out last week suggested employers were cutting jobs at the fastest pace since 2021.
Attention is turning swiftly to the next budget, due on 26 November, and nerves over what measures are to come are hampering sentiment.
Ms Reeves is under pressure to raise more taxes to fill a black hole in the public finances estimated to be between £30-£40bn.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
UK debt become more expensive
The chancellor has again ruled out raising income tax, employee national insurance contributions and VAT, which, she has always stated, would cause direct harm to “working people”.
Possible targets include the wealthy. Banks also fear a raid on their profits.
But the chief executive of the CBI business lobby group told The Guardian newspaper earlier this week that Ms Reeves should now break her promise not to target workers.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Is Labour plotting a ‘wealth tax’?
Rain Newton-Smith argued that new tax rises on businesses would amount to a further choke on growth and employment, harming working people indirectly in the process.
The CBI wants to see reforms to business rates and cuts to VAT thresholds, among other things, as the private sector shoulders its larger tax burden.
“The world is different from when Labour drafted its manifesto, and when the facts change so should the solutions,” Ms Newton-Smith added.
The chancellor has responded with plans to ease some barriers to business as part of efforts to improve growth.
The Treasury is considering an overhaul of small business rates relief rules to end a so-called “cliff edge” penalty facing firms opening a second premises.
The British Retail Consortium warned separately on Friday that 400 of the country’s largest stores could close if such premises fall into a proposed higher business rates band.
It argued that they were already under significant pressure from soaring employment and tax costs, which had accounted for the closure of 1,000 such spaces over the past five years.
Commenting on the ONS data, a spokesperson for the Treasury said: “We know there’s more to do to boost growth, because, whilst our economy isn’t broken, it does feel stuck.
“That’s the result of years of underinvestment, which we’re determined to reverse through our Plan for Change.
“We’re making progress: growth this year was the fastest in the G7; since the election, interest rates have been cut five times, and real wages have risen faster than they did under the last government.
“There’s more to do to build an economy that works for, and rewards, working people. That’s why we are cutting unnecessary red tape, transforming the planning system to get Britain building, and investing billions of pounds into affordable homes, Sizewell C, and local transport across the country.”
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride responded: “While the government lurch from one scandal to another, borrowing costs recently hit a 27-year high – a damning vote of no confidence in Labour that makes painful tax rises all but certain.
“It is little wonder that Starmer has stripped Reeves of control over the budget. But sidelining her is not enough – he must also reject her failed economic approach that has left Britain poorer.”
An influential committee of MPs is seeking COVID-19-style financial support for Jaguar Land Rover as it tries to recover from a cyberattack.
After a week of plant closures, the Committee for Business and Trade has written to the chancellor, asking her what is being offered to the carmaker “to mitigate the risk of significant, long-term commercial damage to affected firms”.
The 34,000 UK workers of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are to remain at home until at least next week after a cyberattack discovered last week halted operations.
Money blog: Football fans can be rejected from job if they support rival team
Staff are still being paid from JLR sites in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, but the entire economy around the West Midlands is affected.
JLR suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility have had to temporarily lay off roughly 6,000 staff.
Operations could be disrupted for “most of September” or worse, according to a report from The Sunday Times.
On Thursday, Business and Trade Committee chair Liam Byrne wrote to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, saying: “Firms across the supply chain are now warning the committee of disruption to both upstream and downstream businesses.
“This disruption, we are told, may imminently pose very significant risks to cashflow.”
Intervention, akin to the emergency steps taken to secure British Steel production, is suggested by Mr Byrne to “protect sovereign areas of strength in the UK’s industrial, scientific and technological base”.
A group of English-speaking hackers claimed responsibility for the JLR attack via a Telegram platform called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an amalgamation of the names of hacking groups Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Four arrested over M&S, Co-Op and Harrods cyber attacks
Scattered Spider, a loose group of relatively young hackers, were behind the Co-Op, Harrods and M&S attacks.
Four people were arrested for their suspected involvement in the April attacks and have been bailed.
The Marks & Spencer (M&S) executive responsible for its technology function is leaving the retailer months after a devastating cyber attack which disrupted its systems at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Sky News has learnt that Rachel Higham, M&S‘s chief digital and technology officer, is leaving the company.
A former WPP and BT Group executive, Ms Higham was hired by M&S early last year.
Money latest: How to give your child a financial head start
Her departure was announced in an internal memo circulated on Thursday.
In it, the company said she was “stepping back from her role”.
“Rachel has been a steady hand and calm head at an extraordinary time for the business, and we wish her well for the future”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
July: Four arrested over cyber attacks
The April cyber attack on M&S, which was conducted by a group called Scattered Spider, brought its online operations to a halt, underlining the growing threat posed by such incidents.
Its click-and-collect service is now back up and running, and the retailer expects part of its costs to be covered by insurance.
M&S said early last month that it was not looking to replace Ms Higham following an enquiry from Sky News.
It was unclear who would succeed her in the role or whether she would be eligible for a payoff.
An M&S spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday that the memo was genuine but refused to comment further.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment11 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024