Offshoring emissions, exporting jobs: The green illusion starving British industry

For decades, Whitehall and Treasury orthodoxy operated on a comfortable assumption: Britain didn't need to make things anymore. The theory went that a modern, dynamic service and finance economy could seamlessly replace dirty heavy industry, keeping the nation prosperous while allowing policymakers to claim moral leadership on climate change.

Across Lancashire and the industrial North, the flaws in that thesis have long been apparent. But today, it has evolved into something far more damaging: a statistical sleight of hand where we congratulate ourselves on cutting domestic carbon emissions, while simply outsourcing our industrial pollution—and the jobs that come with it—to overseas competitors.

On paper, the UK’s territorial emissions look remarkably virtuous. Year after year, government releases celebrate dramatic cuts in domestic greenhouse gases.

The inconvenient truth is that Britain hasn’t eliminated emissions; it has merely offshored them.

When punitive grid tariffs and compounding carbon levies force a domestic foundry, chemical plant, or steelworks to close its doors, global demand for those materials doesn’t vanish. Instead, the UK simply imports the identical carbon-heavy products from territories like China or India, manufactured in plants with weaker environmental controls and shipped thousands of miles back to British shores.

Shutting down local production to import higher-emission foreign alternatives isn't climate policy. It’s an economic own-goal that hollows out our industrial resilience while doing absolutely nothing to help the planet.

Alongside this carbon offshore model sits the promise of the 'Just Transition', the comforting narrative that workers displaced by industrial closures will glide effortlessly into well paid green economy roles, retrofitting heat pumps or servicing offshore turbines.

On the ground, that rhetoric falls apart under scrutiny. When industrial workers at the Grangemouth refinery were surveyed on their confidence in transitioning into future green jobs, just three per cent expressed faith in the plan. That figure should stop policymakers in their tracks. 

It reveals the gulf between ivory tower green transition models and the real-world anxieties of highly skilled, well-paid industrial workforces. You cannot dismantle foundational industrial ecosystems and expect regional communities to survive on vague promises of retraining schemes.

Lancashire’s engineering and manufacturing clusters are among the most resource-efficient in the world. If decarbonisation is to succeed, it must be built on domestic capability, not domestic surrender.

True sustainability means manufacturing the steel for our wind turbines, the chemicals for our insulation, and the precision components for our clean energy grid right here in the UK. That requires an industrial energy policy that supports local factories rather than taxing them into obsolescence.

For regional business leaders, navigating this policy landscape requires proactive operational management. Protecting site margins today means auditing grid exposure, exploring private-wire power, and building on-site energy resilience.

British industry shouldn't have to apologise for making things. It’s time our energy and industrial strategy recognised that keeping production local is the only green policy that actually makes economic sense.

Learn how to navigate commercial energy tariffs and protect your manufacturing margins at RMB&Co.