Government spending of £377M over nine months has been required to keep British Steel’s two Scunthorpe blast furnaces operating following emergency intervention by the Department for Business and Trade in April 2025, the National Audit Office has reported. The support covers ongoing operation of the integrated works, including coke ovens and basic oxygen steelmaking, which supply long products and rail sections critical to UK infrastructure projects. Engineers face continued uncertainty over future capacity, investment in low‑carbon steelmaking routes, and long‑term security of domestic steel supply for major schemes.

Rio Tinto has completed an industrial trial with Prysmian to produce low‑carbon aluminium rod for power cables, blending metal from its hydro-powered Alma smelter in Quebec with ELYSIS inert-anode technology that eliminates direct smelting greenhouse gas emissions and generates oxygen. The trial sits within a five-year supply agreement signed in October 2023 to roll out lower‑carbon aluminium cable solutions for energy transmission and data centres. CRU forecasts data centres will grow from about 7% of North American cable demand in 2025 at roughly 17% CAGR to 2030, with aluminium gaining share for campus power distribution.

Hydrogen has been used by Heidelberg Materials UK to decarbonise asphalt production on an industrial scale for the first time in the UK, replacing conventional fossil fuel combustion in the drying and heating phase of the mixing process. The trial, conducted in a full-scale asphalt plant rather than a laboratory rig, demonstrates that hydrogen burners can maintain production temperatures and binder performance within standard specification limits. For pavement designers and contractors, this signals emerging scope to cut Scope 1 emissions from asphalt plants without changing mix designs or laying procedures.