At the Port Talbot steelworks on the south Wales coast, two 90-metre blast furnaces dominate the skyline. The plant has loomed over the town since an integrated steelworks was built there in the 1950s. It is the economic heart of the area, capable of producing 5m tonnes of steel a year, employing 4,000 people and an estimated 10,000 in the wider community.
A mesmerising orange stream of molten iron flows from the furnace at 1,470C. Yet the industry is having to contend with increased attention on another product of the works: the 5.7m tonnes of carbon dioxide that wafted from an unassuming nearby chimney in 2022 – about 1.8% of the total for the entire UK.
