One of the UK’s largest industrial decarbonisation trade bodies, ADE: Demand, and the GMB Union have today written jointly to Industry Ministers warning half of British industry is being left behind and urgent action is needed to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Government industrial policy is currently focused on a small number of large, coastal sites where heavy industry is concentrated. These clusters have received significant government funding and policy attention to develop shared infrastructure for carbon capture and hydrogen. Yet, half of the UK’s industrial emissions come from “dispersed” sites – smaller businesses dotted across the country, mostly in rural areas.
This includes factories, distilleries and processing plants outside the major industrial clusters which have no clear route to decarbonise and no dedicated support. ADE: Demand and the GMB warn that this puts up to 770,000 skilled direct jobs and 3.6 million indirect jobs at risk.
These businesses want to decarbonise but they face electricity prices up to fourteen times higher than gas, connection quotes in the millions, and policy solutions designed for coastal clusters that simply do not fit their reality.
Sarah Honan, Head of ADE: Demand, said: “Instead of backing every business to decarbonise, we are picking winners. The sites that power rural economies are being left with no plan and no support. Without a strategy we risk hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, Acting National Secretary of GMB, said: “Our members in rural industries need certainty about their future. The Government has rightly focused on major clusters, but half the country’s industrial emissions come from everywhere else. We need a plan that works for those sites too – so that jobs and communities are protected.”
In their joint letter, ADE: Demand and GMB ask Government to agree a dedicated policy framework that puts dispersed sites on a level footing with clusters, using regional energy plans to unlock practical, locally led solutions. They also stress the need for capital and operational support to match what is already available for cluster-based technologies.
The discontinuation of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund has further narrowed options for these rural sites, leaving a gap that neither organisation believes can be ignored.