Department for Business and Trade, Tata Steel UK

The value of the grant is up to £500 million. The purpose of the subsidy is to enable greener steel production at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot site, by replacing existing blast furnaces with an electric arc furnace. This is a Subsidy of Particular Interest (‘SoPI’).
Our key takeaways from the Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU) report are:

- Ensure to explain whether the benefits that the subsidy will result in are part of the wider policy objective.
- Where relevant (e.g. in the case of a subsidy seeking to aid decarbonisation), explain how total emissions savings that are identified within the assessment are modelled, to show that the policy statement would not be met in the counterfactual.
- Clearly set out which product markets the subsidy recipient operates in and the nature of competition in those markets, including the degree of product differentiation (or otherwise) to understand how the subsidy might impact the extent of competition in those markets.
- Where the Energy and Environment Principles found in Schedule 2 of the Subsidy Control Act are relevant to the subsidy, ensure to conduct an assessment against those which are relevant and provide supporting evidence in each case.