Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the number of tonnes of coal required to produce steel at current levels in the next five years.

Finished steel products are produced in the UK through a mixture of the blast furnace route, which requires coal and iron ore, and through the electric arc furnace route, which does not require coal. We have not estimated the tonnes of coal required for current production of UK finished steel products.

The Government has long supported the UK steel industry to exploit opportunities and plan for future demand with wide-ranging action.

For the first time this year we have published information from departments and their arm’s-length bodies on how much steel they have procured over the last financial year and how they have applied the steel procurement guidance.

The Government has also published details of upcoming steel requirements for national infrastructure projects. The data shows how the Government plans to use over three million tonnes of steel until 2021 on infrastructure projects such as the construction of Hinkley Point, and the maintenance and upgrading of the UK’s motorway network.

We recently as a Department signed up to the UK Steel Charter. We want to acknowledge and support this initiative from industry. We have been encouraging the UK steel sector to strengthen their engagement with all existing and potential domestic steel consumers, maximising opportunities to benefit from the £3.8 billion a year by 2030 high market value opportunities we have identified.

The Government has provided more than £291m in compensation to the steel sector since 2013 to make energy costs more competitive, including over £53 million during 2018. And last year we announced the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, worth up to £315 million, to support businesses with high energy use to transition to a low carbon future and to cut their bills through increased energy efficiency.