From a Scantling to a Bill of Works – what does our latest work mean for the future of UK steel?
Yesterday trade body UK Steel launched its Procurement report on how the UK Government could better use procurement policy to drive use of UK made steel. Within the report was use of research commissioned from my own consultancy LumenEE to look in detail at the UK offshore wind industry’s steel needs.
The report – Bill of Works – builds on work between LumenEE and Everoze such as the Supply Chain Capability Analysis (SCCA), Celtic Sea Blueprint and Tilt the Balance. Each of these reports has tried to delve deeper into the UK supply chain and be more specific about values and quantities needed, and also to shine a light lower down the supply chain.
Led by myself and Everoze’s George Gibberd, with expert advice including from Will Rowley and Dave Oswin, Bill of Works follows was a recommendation within the SCCA and the Industrial Growth Plan. The SCCA highlighted that if we are to plan in detail how to prepare our supply chain for floating offshore wind, there needs to be greater transparency about what specific components will be needed. The resulting idea was to draw up a Bill of Works identifying specific volumes of components and specification details.
Inside the construction and shipping sectors these are known as scantlings (hat tip to Darren McQuillan for the introduction and the clear thinking). Scantlings are the dimensions (depth, breadth, and thickness) of the structural elements in a vessel or other structure.
Our aim was to produce a list of these scantlings – the different primary and secondary elements used to build an offshore wind project –calculate how many would be needed per wind farm and for a pipeline of offshore wind projects – and then apply this to the UK’s future offshore pipeline to work out the specific different steel requirements for different sizes and types of foundations (fixed and floating).
So how much steel does the UK offshore wind sector need? The overall result looks like this:
Delivery of the approx. 100GW offshore wind pipeline is going to require up to 25m tonnes of steel. Most of that (88%) is plate, a lot of the rest is rebar, and then there are other steels such as tubular sections, rolled sections, bolts, welding flux, bolts etc. All of these down to the number of bolts have been quantified in our work.
The next question is the more interesting… how much can the UK actually make? Phase Two is going to look at that in detail, taking our detailed steel specifications and mapping them against UK mills and UK fabricators. However, we already know quite a lot based on our research.
First, the bottleneck so far hasn’t been the UK steel sector but the lack of fabrication in the UK. For our project we took RenewableUK’s Energy Pulse data for projects built in UK waters between 2021 and 2025. Based on an estimate of how much steel they needed cross checked with fabrication contract notices, we estimate that less than 2% of fabrication activity took place in the UK. About half took place elsewhere in Europe showing that the problem is not so much competition with Asian yards (though that is an issue) but the superior offer from companies in Germany, Denmark, Holland and Spain.
So its clear that if we want to see UK steel used in UK offshore wind farms, the first task is to increase UK fabrication of components. The good news is that is starting to happen – for example SeAH’s new monopile facility has entered pre-production as it gears up ready for full opening. Once that is in place, then we need to look at what UK mills can supply and how to grow this volume, and then do this across all the other components – assessing options for growing UK fabrication alongside growing supply of UK steel. That could be through use of new technologies like laser or vacuum welding, as well as through investment in existing or new plant capacity.
Final point, this is an opportunity worth taking as the quantities of steel needed are vast. The UK made 5.6m tonnes of steel in 2023, though the proportion of steel needs that the supplies through domestic production has been falling progressively over time. As offshore wind demand ramps up, annual steel demand will increase from approx 0.25m tonnes per annum to up to 2m tonnes per annum by the early 2030s.
Put in context, the demand for steel between now and 2030 is 5.7x greater than the demand for steel for steel from UK highways, rail, nuclear, defence and public building construction combined.
Phase Two of this work - mapping specific steel requirements to UK fabricator and UK mill capability - is already underway. Meaning soon we can report on what the is already and could be supported to make.
Watch this space, and if you're interested in advice on offshore wind and steel please get in touch.
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