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.
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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.
It’s like The Godfather, one reformed drug trafficker tells me.
The mythical gangster film centred on an organised crime dynasty locked in a transfer of power.
Communities in Scotland currently have a front row seat to a new war of violence, torture, and taunts as feuding drug lords and notorious families grapple for control of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
There have been more than a dozen brutal attacks over the past six weeks – ranging from fire bombings to attacks on children and gun violence.
A firebomb attack in Scotland
Victims left for dead, businesses up in flames
Gangsters have filmed themselves setting fire to buildings and homes connected to the associates and relatives of their bitter rivals.
The main aim, they boast, is to “exterminate” the opposition.
The taunting footage, accompanied by the song Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group, has been plastered over social media as part of a deliberate game of goading.
A 12-year-old boy and 72-year-old woman were left for dead when teenagers wearing balaclavas burst into a home in north Glasgow.
Garages and businesses have gone up in flames. Shots were fired at an Edinburgh house.
Signals are being sent of who wants control of Scotland’s dark criminal underworld.
A firebomb attack that saw a man throw an incendiary device through a building window
The fire attack set to the song Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group
What’s caused the gang war?
The former director of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, Graeme Pearson, explains how a “vacuum of leadership” is playing a part.
Last October, Glasgow-based cocaine kingpin Jamie Stevenson, known as The Iceman, was jailed after orchestrating a £100m cocaine shipment stashed in banana boxes from South America.
The mob leader was one of Britain’s most wanted, running his business like another on-screen criminal enterprise: The Sopranos.
The 59-year-old fugitive went on the run before eventually being hunted and apprehended by police while out jogging in the Netherlands.
Jamie Stevenson. Pic: Police Scotland
Pic: Crown Office
‘Old scores to settle’
But paranoia was running rife about how this notorious gangster could be brought down. Was there a grass? Was it one of their own?
It further fuelled divisions and forced new alliances to be forged across Scotland’s organised criminal networks.
It wasn’t until The Iceman case came to court that it was revealed an encrypted messaging platform, known as EncroChat, had been infiltrated by law enforcement.
It ultimately led to Stevenson pleading guilty.
Ex-senior drug enforcement officer Mr Pearson told Sky News: “It is a complex picture because you have got people who are in prison who still want to have influence outside and look after what was their business.
“On the outside you’ve got wannabes who are coming forward, and they think this is an opportunity for them, and you have got others have old scores to settle that they could not settle when crime bosses were around.”
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Graeme Pearson
Mr Pearson describes a toxic mix swirling to create outbursts of violence unfolding in Scotland.
He concluded: “All that mixes together – and the greed for the money that comes from drugs, and from the kudos that comes from being a ‘main man’, and you end up with competition, violence, and the kind of incidents we have seen over the past four to six weeks.”
New wave of violence ‘barbaric’
Glasgow man Mark Dempster is a former addict, dealer, and drug smuggler who is now an author and respected counsellor helping people quit drinking and drugs.
He describes the “jostle for power” as not a new concept among Glasgow’s high profile gangland families.
Mark Dempster
“There is always going to be someone new who wants to control the markets. It is like The Godfather. There is no difference between Scotland, Albania, or India,” he said.
Mr Dempster suggests a shift in tactics in Glasgow and Edinburgh in recent weeks, with 12-year-olds being viciously attacked in the middle of the night.
“It is barbaric. When young people, children, get pulled into the cross fire. It takes it to a different level.
“At least with the old mafiosa they had an unwritten rule that no children, no other family members. You would deal directly with the main people that were your opposition.”
Police Scotland is racing to get control of the situation, but declined to speak to Sky News about its ongoing operation.
It has been suggested 100 officers are working on this case, with “arrests imminent”.
But this is at the very sharp end of sophisticated criminal empires where the police are not feared, there are fierce vendettas and, clearly, power is up for grabs.
UK
Laws may need to be bolstered to crack down on exploitation of child ‘influencers’, senior MP suggests
Laws may need to be strengthened to crack down on the exploitation of child “influencers”, a senior Labour MP has warned.
Chi Onwurah, chair of the science, technology and innovation committee, said parts of the Online Safety Act – passed in October 2023 – may already be “obsolete or inadequate”.
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Experts have raised concerns that there is a lack of provision in industry laws for children who earn money through brand collaborations on social media when compared to child actors and models.
This has led to some children advertising in their underwear on social media, one expert has claimed.
Those working in more traditional entertainment fields are safeguarded by performance laws, which strictly govern the hours a minor can work, the money they earn and who they are accompanied by.
The Child Influencer Project, which has curated the world’s first industry guidelines for the group, has warned of a “large gap in UK law” which is not sufficiently filled by new online safety legislation.
Official portrait of Chi Onwurah.
Pic: UK Parlimeant
The group’s research found that child influencers could be exposed to as many as 20 different risks of harm, including to dignity, identity, family life, education, and their health and safety.
Ms Onwurah told Sky News there needs to be a “much clearer understanding of the nature of child influencers ‘work’ and the legal and regulatory framework around it”.
She said: “The safety and welfare of children are at the heart of the Online Safety Act and rightly so.
“However, as we know in a number of areas the act may already be obsolete or inadequate due to the lack of foresight and rigour of the last government.”
Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, agreed that regulations “need to keep pace with the times”, with child influencers on social media “protected in the same way” as child actors or models.
“Liberal Democrats would welcome steps to strengthen the Online Safety Act on this front,” she added.
‘Something has to be done’
MPs warned in 2022 that the government should “urgently address the gap in UK child labour and performance regulation that is leaving child influencers without protection”.
They asked for new laws on working hours and conditions, a mandate for the protection of the child’s earnings, a right to erasure and to bring child labour arrangements under the oversight of local authorities.
However, Dr Francis Rees, the principal investigator for the Child Influencer Project, told Sky News that even after the implementation of the Online Safety Act, “there’s still a lot wanting”.
“Something has to be done to make brands more aware of their own duty of care towards kids in this arena,” she said.
Dr Rees added that achieving performances from children on social media “can involve extremely coercive and disruptive practices”.
“We simply have to do more to protect these children who have very little say or understanding of what is really happening. Most are left without a voice and without a choice.”
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The researcher pointed to one particular instance, in which children were advertising an underwear brand on social media.
She said: “The kids in the company’s own marketing material or their own media campaigns are either pulling up the band of the underwear underneath their clothing, or they’re holding the underwear up while they’re fully clothed.
“But whenever you look at any of the sponsored content produced by families with children – mum, dad, and child are in their underwear.”
Dr Rees said it is “night and day” in terms of how companies are behaving when they have responsibility for the material, versus “the lack of responsibility once they hand it over to parents with kids”.
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