On 19 October 2026 UK Steel published its eleventh annual electricity-price assessment, Competitive electricity prices: a prerequisite for reindustrialisation. The Guardian carried the figures the same day. SteelOrbis summarised them on 20 October.
For 2026/27 the association puts electricity for British steel producers at £91 per megawatt-hour after the exemptions and compensation already in force. The comparable figure is £61 in France and £79 in Germany. That is a 49 percent premium over French mills and a 15 percent premium over German mills, or about £30 and £12 per megawatt-hour. Against the report’s non-European benchmarks the gap is wider: 71 percent above Turkey at £53, 68 percent above Vietnam at £54, and 125 percent above Alberta at £40. UK Steel estimates the French gap alone adds £66 million to British steel electricity bills in 2026/27. The cumulative extra cost versus France since 2017/18 is put at £917 million; versus Germany since 2016/17 it is £752 million.
The Guardian wrote that the French premium is the widest in three years. UK Steel had put last year’s gap at £18 per megawatt-hour. The 2022 peak during the European gas shock was £153. Those figures are electricity costs for the melt shop. They sit next to the scrap ticket on an electric-arc heat.
Wholesale power now sets the melt cost
UK Steel says the British Industry Supercharger and later government changes have already narrowed the policy-cost and network-cost parts of the gap. What remains is mainly the wholesale electricity price. Great Britain still sets that price from gas-fired generation more often than France, which is dominated by nuclear plant. The association attributes the further widening in the 2026/27 book in part to the US–Israel–Iran conflict lifting gas-linked wholesale power.
World Steel Association figures cited in the report put energy at 20 to 40 percent of steel production costs. For an electric-arc furnace that recycles steel scrap, electricity is about half of total energy input. Some UK producers already see electricity costs at up to 180 percent of gross value added. Scrap, iron ore and coke are largely global prices. The power price is the part that differs by country.
That is why the same report treats scrap handling as part of the steel cost stack. UK Steel asks the government to widen Supercharger and competitiveness-scheme eligibility to the rest of the supply chain, including scrap handling and coating, which it says are still excluded. A yard or processor that prepares furnace feed is on the same electricity book as the melt even when it is not the mill.
The UK furnace list is already electric
Four electric-arc furnaces already operate in the United Kingdom. UK Steel writes that Tata Steel UK is replacing blast-furnace production with a new electric-arc furnace at Port Talbot, which would be a fifth, and that British Steel is considering electric-arc capacity as part of its future. Electrification would more than double the sector’s electricity use. A site switching from blast-furnace ironmaking could raise its own electricity consumption fivefold.
At the current £30 per megawatt-hour gap with France, UK Steel puts the extra annual electricity cost of an electrified UK steel sector at about £165 million against an equivalent French operation. A hydrogen-based route would raise that extra bill to about £248 million. Those are association cases, not a booking for this week. They sit next to the European furnace list already on this site: Eurofer’s 20 new EAFs to 2030, of which 10.3 million tonnes a year is delayed, and the Gijón longs stop, where Spanish energy costs were already cutting shifts.
The United Kingdom imported about 68 percent of the steel it used and exported 37 percent of domestic output, on the association’s 2025 figures. The European Union took 71 percent of those exports and supplied 57 percent of imports. A British melt that pays £30 more per megawatt-hour than a French competitor is selling into that same market.
Who it affects among yards, traders, mills and processors
A UK yard selling HMS, shredded or new-production cuttings into a domestic electric-arc shop should treat power as part of the offtake question. Ask whether the buyer is melting this week or parking metal. Peak-hour stops, of the kind Unesid already described in Spain, cut daily melt without a published halt. A full yard and a furnace that will only take the next cheap-power shift are working on different calendars.
Traders stemming UK ferrous toward Turkey should keep two books. Turkey remains the usual deep-sea outlet for UK surplus, and UK tonnes already overtook Dutch supply in the January–August 2026 import mix. The same UK Steel table puts Turkish industrial power at £53 per megawatt-hour against £91 in Great Britain. A Turkish mill buying just-in-time, as BIR’s October ferrous note already recorded, is not paying the British power premium. Do not price a delayed inland UK lot off a CFR Iskenderun HMS 80/20 indication. Who buys European scrap still starts with Turkish electric-arc works for the seaborne surplus.
EU yards and mills that compete with UK longs and flats on the same export markets should read the £30 gap as a conversion-cost difference, not as a change in scrap generation. Collection and freight still sit on the delivered tonne.
Processors and scrap-handling sites in the UK should note the Supercharger point. If relief stops at the melt shop, the shear, fragmentiser and dock still pay the uncompensated industrial rate. That does not change the grade on the ticket. It does change whether a prepared parcel is worth moving this week.
How to name the lot
Name the grade the mill already buys: HMS 1&2 80/20, shredded, or new-production cuttings if that is what you have. UK and other European works often write E40 for fragmentiser steel and E3 or E1 for heavier melting steel. If the buyer works in ISRI language, write HMS or shredded 211 and say so. See also HMS scrap. Do not invent a copper cap or a thickness you have not measured.
State tonnes, packing, city or load port, and whether the sale is ex-works, delivered mill, FOB or CFR. If the parcel is waiting on a UK domestic melt, say so. Do not write a power-price, carbon claim or Supercharger status on the parcel.
Verified companies can list on live lots or post a wanted enquiry. Request access if you have ferrous feed for a UK electric-arc shop or a mill programme to cover.