iron, fire, and the future is a compelling deep dive into the industrial history, economic struggles, and future prospects of redcar, a seaside town in north yorkshire, england. hosted by danny nicholson, a teesside university student, this podcast unpacks redcar’s journey from a thriving steelmaking hub to a town searching for its place in a rapidly evolving, greener world.

for over a century, redcar’s skyline was dominated by the smoke and steel of industry, providing jobs, prosperity, and a unique identity. historian dr. tosh warwick paints a vivid picture of redcar’s transformation from a quiet fishing settlement to an industrial powerhouse, driven by the steel industry’s boom.

however, as the late 20th century brought increased foreign competition, economic downturns, and political shifts, redcar found itself at the center of a nationwide industrial decline. the collapse of the steel industry devastated the local economy, stripping the town of its core identity and leaving many residents questioning their future.

in the search for renewal, redcar became a focal point in the uk’s transition toward net-zero carbon emissions. scientist matthew cotton discusses the town’s involvement in a government-backed hydrogen energy trial, an ambitious attempt to repurpose existing gas infrastructure for cleaner energy. however, despite the promise of innovation, the project was met with skepticism, safety concerns, and strong public opposition. residents feared being treated as “guinea pigs” in an uncertain experiment, leading to the project’s postponement in 2023.

with hydrogen energy set for potential revival in 2026, the podcast raises key questions: can redcar overcome the scars of industrial decline? how can the government and corporations regain public trust? and what does the future hold for a town caught between its industrial past and a greener tomorrow?

through expert interviews, community perspectives, and an engaging narrative, iron, fire, and the future sheds light on the challenges of transitioning to sustainable energy while honoring the rich heritage of a working-class town.

podcast transcript:

danny nicholson: welcome to iron, fire, and the future, a standalone podcast taking you through the rise, fall, and future of redcar, a town in north yorkshire, england. i’m danny nicholson, a teesside university student, here to join you on that journey. five hours north of london stands a seaside town where people once flirted for the picturesque views, the feeling of waves crashing against their feet, and sand in between their toes, and the prospect of a new future forged in steel.

on today’s podcast, we’re going to hear about the rise, fall, and future of redcar, a town which has found itself at the center of the nation’s net zero aspirations. we’re going to look at the aborted trial of hydrogen power in the town, why it failed and what might come next. but first, to set the scene, here’s historian tosh warwick, ph.d., to tell us a little bit about redcar’s past.

tosh warwick: redcar, for the past 150 years, approximately, the skyline has been defined by industry blast furnaces, you know, smoke an industrial river. but if you go back beyond that period, it was a kind of idyllic, scenic, you know, unspoilt landscape, and we see these in a lot of the, the artistic depictions of redcar before, when it was chiefly, a fishing settlement and surrounded by a largely agrarian, community, very much untouched by the the harshness of industry that, had already started shaping parts of of britain elsewhere.

by 1846, i think it was, when the railway extended to redcar that opens up all those opportunities for placing your works along that route as well, and towards redcar in the in the early 20th century you had the emergence of a company town, dormanstown, built for those workers.

so that’s how redcar became a key center of particularly steelmaking that had the furnace set to produce iron. but they had that kind of, aspiration to be integrated, whereby, you have the core ovens, you have the iron, the iron works nearby. so it’s all pretty, a smooth operation. then the iron goes to be processed to steel.

in the post for decades, there’s major, multi-million-pound investment in the broader redcar steelworks sites. you know, and there’s huge new, blast furnace furnaces being built. so you have this whole transformation of this land. and redcar becomes known as the main, certainly by the 1960s, (site of) steel manufacturing on teesside rather than middlesbrough, which was the birthplace of iron and steel manufacturing.

steelworkers were prepared well. so people that could prosper, work the industry, and progress. you know, you wouldn’t be able to do that in other industries. 

dn: the town wasn’t just booming from an industrial perspective. the influx of relatively well-paid jobs in steelworks in redcar and middlesbrough meant the town also became something of a leisure destination for workers keen to spend their hard earned cash on the rides and amusements along the seafront.

tw: it was real pleasant, redcar. because people went to redcar to spend their money. there would be organized trains from middlesbrough when the factories were shut. when, as a day off, people would pile into a train. some would even walk the eight miles from middlesbrough to the seaside. and the seaside was an area of release. it’s where people went to escape the smoke and the cluster in the dankness of living in the iron manufacturing town, “iron-opolis,” as middlesbrough was known.

you know, redcar was but thriving but unfortunately, like a lot of seaside resorts and like a lot of, industrial town, the 70s, 80s and onwards have proven to be a lot more depressing.

dn: for redcar, the prosperity didn’t last forever, and what came next was a damning period of a harsh new reality for this once thriving seaside town.

tw: yeah, there was a number of factors that led to major industrial decline. certainly in terms of the iron and steel work. so there was issues around the investment into the site in the 1970s. there’s a rise in foreign competition. there’s disputes with the trade unions. you know, unfortunately the blast furnace was blown in, in 1979, which is the same year that a certain margaret thatcher rose to prominence and became prime minister.

and those thatcher years on this so-called rationalization and this kind of, cutting back of british steel, as it was. redcar really felt the brunt of that. it was a real kind of acceleration of decline. in 1975, there was around 300,000 people employed in the in the steel industry, in great britain. by around the mid 1980s, that’s more or less halved.

by 1990, that’s below 100,000. it’s not just about the economic side. the economics is- obviously, you have to be able to pay your wages. you have to be able to keep a roof over your head. that’s key. we get that. but it’s about your kind of your mentality, your pride, your sense of place, your very being.

you know, you exist because of industry. you know, for that to be snatched away and to see this industry decline like it did in the 1980s, it’s devastating. you know, people move away. there’s a drain of skills in the teesside-redcar area. but it’s a cataclysmic divorce. it’s a real kind of break with the past.

the break with what you do. you know what we do here. we make, iron and steel. and then to be told that, well, actually you’re making less of that now and there will be less of you making it in the 70s and 80s- it has a major impact. and i think it has an impact in terms of people’s aspirations, in terms of what they believe can be achieved by staying in the area.

i think it, i think it it had a profound impact on people’s wellbeing.

dn: brandished with the struggles of the past few decades in 2023, the people of redcar were introduced to the chance of a new future shaped by escaping the smog and embracing green technology. i spoke to matthew cotton, a scientist on the hydrogen project who talks me through the project and struggles they faced.

matthew cotton: yeah. so the project in redcar was, initiated by a company called northern gas networks. so northern gas networks is a company that supplies natural gas. you know, they say they own a lot of the infrastructure for, providing gas that’s piped into people’s homes and businesses, which they use for cooking and for space heating and hot water heating.

and for a while, northern gas works, along with a lot of other utilities, has been interested in, sort of decarbonize their infrastructure. and, one of the ways in which they think they could do this is through, switching from natural gas to hydrogen. but there are some technical challenges involved with that. so hydrogen is a very small molecule- hydrogen atoms are very small.

and so the question about whether or not the infrastructure is going to prevent leaks- it’s very important. it’s also a highly reactive gas. so certain parts of the infrastructure, certain metals might might corrode or there might be chemical reactions that go on within the pipe. so there was a lot of scientific research around the feasibility of that.

and they have a quite a good safety case now. so they’ve sort of developed this infrastructure. it’s safe. but then they need to sort of trial this in real life. and so there were projects that were proposed in redcar and cleveland. and one of the reasons for them selecting redcar was precisely that sense that there is an industrial heritage in this region, that people are used to big infrastructure, they’re used to these sort of big industries, and therefore they thought this would be a good place to trial it.

unfortunately, both of those projects that were proposed, failed. now they failed in the sense that the official reason that the former conservative government gave was that there wasn’t enough actual hydrogen supply. you know, it’s a supply of hydrogen to make the project work, but it probably didn’t help that there was a lot of public backlash in redcar.

and this was happening during an election year when the government of the time was already kind of a bit on the back foot. and so this sort of combination of sort of technical and political reasons is probably why the project didn’t go ahead. 

dn: like the people of redcar, i was learning about hydrogen energy for the first time.

so i was keen to find out why hydrogen and what makes it a potential new solution to a greener future.

mc: there’s lots of- we have legally binding commitments to reduce our, greenhouse gas emissions, particularly our carbon emissions. some sectors, like the electricity sector, have done quite a good job of doing that, switching from first from coal to then gas, and then from gas to renewables.

but some sectors are quite difficult to decarbonize. and heating and hot water, sort of hot water heating and space heating are two of those sectors that have been difficult to decarbonize. and so hydrogen presented a bit of a solution because it’s relatively easy to change a regular gas boiler to a hydrogen boiler or relatively easy to change a gas cooking hub to a hydrogen hub.

and so it did present a bit of an opportunity for sort of reconfiguring the existing gas network that’s already there towards hydrogen, rather than using more electricity. if you like, to heat homes and heat water. the benefits, of course- so when you have hydrogen and you burn hydrogen instead of producing carbon dioxide, it fuses with oxygen and forms a water vapor.

so the only thing coming out of the tailpipe, so to speak, is water vapor. its overall green credentials are dependent on what type of hydrogen production method you use. so the most common method is what’s called gray hydrogen. gray hydrogen is really- it’s formed from natural gas. it uses this process- it’s steam methane reformation. that basically takes the hydrogen out of out of natural gas.

and then you’re still left with a kind of waste product, which you can use for other things. but it isn’t the most sort of environmentally friendly from a climate change perspective. a better version is what’s called blue hydrogen, which is to do exactly the same process. but then you combine that with carbon capture and storage. so you’re sort of capturing the carbon dioxide in and storing it, or utilizing it for another purpose.

and then there is green hydrogen, which is formed differently. that’s from the electrolysis of water. so you basically using electricity to split water molecules into component hydrogen and oxygen. and then you can use both of those gases. in theory the greenest version is the green hydrogen, but it’s not produced in huge quantities. it uses renewable energy which you might then use for another purpose.

so there is a sort of question of why would you use the renewable energy to produce hydrogen when you could just use that renewable energy in homes and businesses directly? but again, all of these things need to be produced at such a scale that it can replace all of the fossil fuels that we’re currently using. and that’s one of the big challenges for the industry.

dn: the ambitious project aim to inject hope back into the sleeping giant of redcar, but it faced backlash and it was quickly postponed in december of the same year it was introduced. 

mc: some of the research that we’ve done has shown that people are concerned about being early adopters, right. if you’re an early adopter, you take on a lot of the financial risk of this new technology.

if it doesn’t get scaled up and become part of the the normal landscape of energy generation. and so, that was a big concern that people had. the others were around safety risks, of course. as i say, hydrogen is very flammable. one of the things we find is that when you mention hydrogen to people, certainly people of my age and probably older, one of the first things that they think about is the hindenburg disaster, this, big sort of airship that set on fire, it was filled with hydrogen.

you know, it’s this very big sort of public spectacle at the time. it’s a very old example. but because we don’t have a lot of hydrogen around, that’s the first sort of cultural touchstone that people use to imagine hydrogen. so, there were concerns around risks. there are concerns around safety and concerns around sort of financial adoption.

and so the term that got sort of used quite a lot on social media amongst protest organizations campaigning against the village trials was- we’re being treated like guinea pigs. and that was that’s quite a powerful message locally to a lot of protest organizations. and so that was certainly a factor in why the village trial didn’t go ahead.

distrust of local authorities or distrust of government in some of the research that we did around community perspectives, some of the distrust was not also about government, but also about utilities. so there was mistrust not necessarily directed at the local authority per se, but towards utilities in general and how they are managed and, and a general sense of, well, would this be better, would this be worse?

so not sort of dismissing hydrogen out of hand, but just in general- how do we know that they’re not just coming here to sort of extract value from the community? 

dn: two years on from the postponement of the hydrogen village project in redcar, i went back to find out what people had to say on the project now, and what went wrong in the eyes of the public.

person 1: well, northern gas didn’t make it clear to me it was safe to use. i mean, all i know about hydrogen is it explodes. 

person 2: well, i just don’t trust the government. my dad used to work for british steel and his dad before him and i mean, look what happened there.

person 3: i really like the idea of doing something good for the environment in redcar and choosing a renewable energy source. i just think it didn’t go as well as it could have done because of the lack of communication. like a lot of residents didn’t understand what hydrogen energy was or like how it was beneficial.

person 4: i think it was a good idea. however, living in a deprived area like redcar, if the whole thing had gone wrong, the financial burden falling on the residents potentially would have had a massive impact on the area.

dn: pending approval from the government. the conversion to hydrogen energy in redcar is set to recommence in 2026, keeping in line with the strides taken towards sustainability commitments in the uk, this project was always aimed at being a learning opportunity. however, rather than being given an education on hydrogen, those involved were shown the key to the success of future initiatives: the people.

without the trust, support and passion of the local community, no project can truly thrive. and now people like matthew cotton and tosh warwick are striving to revive the bond between industry and community.

meanwhile, in county cleveland in teesside, northern england, one-third of families re-wear dirty clothes and  one-quarter are in hygiene poverty, however many feel they are priced out of buying the newest fashion trends or new clothes in general.  

thrift for the future

enter the festival of thrift, an annual celebration of sustainable living that is looking to make a change in the fashion industry and help aid residents in teesside while also aiming to make an impact on a global scale. every september, the festival of thrift erects dozens of stalls for local second-hand clothes sellers and artisans to offer items for sale, in a new chosen location across teesside and cleveland. 

while the festival provides an opportunity for selling and recycling clothes, co-creative director at festival of thrift, tanya steinhauser sees the festival as a chance to educate and inspire those attending. “the idea of the festival is to showcase a really diverse and vibrant program that’s filled with hands-on workshops and innovative performances, interactive installations and provoking talks. everything revolves around sustainability in the smallest and widest senses,” she said.  

in its 12-year lifetime, the festival has grown year-on-year. this has meant that steinhauser and her team have had to find creative ways to engage the festival goers as well as make good use of the site. this year’s event hosted various workshops on how to plant, grow, and harvest your own food. just a 20 yard walk around the ground would show you the ins-and-outs of repurposing old, ripped jeans, as well as  workshops in ancient japanese mending skills to bring broken household items back to life.  

being an epicentre of all things sustainability with so much on offer i asked stienhauser to pick one must-visit for future festivals. “i am quite excited about the future foods activity area,” she said.  “i’m really into growing and cooking from scratch and these workshops  on kind of fermenting things, because obviously food waste and kind of methane waste from food  waste is a big issue as well. so just teaching people hacks again around how to turn  something that might be going off in your fridge to something that you can put in a jar and  eat in a couple of months. but the future food area is kind of, there’s a mural that and i’m  quite excited about that.”

cutting out fast fashion

fast fashion is on the rise, but many don’t know what it is and whether they are endorsing it. in short, fast fashion is all about making clothes quickly and cheaply, usually copying the latest trends. the idea is to get people to buy a lot of new clothes frequently because it’s affordable. but these clothes often don’t last long, and the process can harm the environment and exploit workers. it’s about quantity over quality, leading to a throwaway culture where people buy, wear, and toss things at a rapid pace.

throw-away culture is taking the hot seat right now, from 2000 to 2015 the rates of clothing sales has more than doubled, while the general usage of clothes decreased.

but according to steinhauser this quickening pace of buying, wearing, and discarding is unsustainable. “so we really like a slogan, ‘decades, not seasons,’” she said. steinhauser recommended thinking long term about your wardrobe, investing in higher priced items of higher quality. 

nicer clothes tend to last longer, ultimately cutting down the cost in the long run and mitigating the environmental effects of fast fashion. “the materials used are a really important thing to consider. buying clothes made of natural materials like hemp and staying away from stuff like latex and polyester makes a huge difference,” she said. 

“repairing and renting, even sharing or swapping clothes are all good options,” steinhauser said.  

with fashion so readily available, us consumers have also had a change of mindset on how we buy and use our fashion and for some possibly sleepwalk into the fast fashion culture. steinhauser believes it is also down to us to be proactive and change the way we think about how we buy and consume fashion: “the modern world has given so many kind of other options that just make us not really rethink what we’re doing and that there are alternatives that actually, help us, live towards a more hopeful, hopeful climate future which is something we need to make an active decision to find and utilize.”

oceanites’ research is a pioneer in giving us a glimpse of how climate change is altering the landscape and the behaviors of these species. semi-annually, oceanites publishes the state of the antarctic penguins (soap) report. this provides data for major stakeholders such as the commission for the conservation of antarctic marine living resources (ccamlr) and a foundation for climate crisis awareness and outreach.

oceanites research and unique portrayal of penguins as avatars helps illustrate how humans may or may not adapt when the warming of the planet comes our way.

in the sound bite below, naveen discusses his research into how tourism may be having an impact on antarctica, and the stark damage climate change doing.

i think counting penguins is pretty darn sexy and cool and neat and wonderful!

– ron naveen

in the most recent issue of the soap report, they recorded a total of 6.12 million mating pairs nesting across 740 antarctic sites. the report demonstrates that chinstrap and adélie populations continue to decline, while gentoo populations continue to increase.

a multitude of factors impact the viability of penguin populations. some of which include the availability of food, a safe environment that is free of disease, and the ability to healthily and steadily reproduce. without assurance of all of these factors, the penguins populations may be forced to migrate to different parts of the continent, change their diets, and change where they are finding food.

the penguins really are teaching us, sending us messages, if you will, about how our planet is changing.

– ron naveen

the clip below features naveen describing how he learned to be more open to being educated by the penguins after monitoring four crucial vitals that both humans and penguins share.

after nearly 30 field seasons in antarctica, naveen has been a firsthand witness to the changes of the landscape. in the last 70 years, parts of the antarctic continent have warmed on average significantly, with the antarctic peninsula now 3 degrees fahrenheit warmer than pre-1950 records. this is ahead of the global rate of warming which has risen 2 degrees fahrenheit, since 1850.

this subsequently causes a change in habitat for penguins. on the other hand, this also causes the emergence of new areas that were once inaccessible due to ice formations. and it is ultimately penguins who suffer from this change in environment. by reducing the amount of habitable area for penguins, population will naturally drop, it also means reproduction is hindered too, as there is less room for egg fertilization by the male penguins as the females hunt for food. seeing new areas crop up that were once inaccessible may seem like a good thing on the surface, but it too has a negative impact on the penguins as they have to traverse new unfamiliar environments.

i can walk beaches now that i couldn’t walk 40 years ago. the ice has receded or calved away. i’ve seen huge penguin colonies shrink by a half or more. it’s pretty upsetting, actually.

– ron naveen

here, naveen recounts the huge changes he has seen in his time exploring and researching antarctica and how some penguins are adapting to the new climate, while others are suffering.

despite the mounting challenges that naveen sees antarctica and the penguins facing, he is not giving up on seeking solutions. in the last two years, oceanites has revolutionized their data collection techniques with the help of drone imagery. their current technique uses these images to hand count the penguins. oceanites is in the process of developing an algorithm that will allow computer programs to automatically count the penguins from the images produced by the drone. this technology could allow for a greater amount of data to be uploaded to the organization’s database at a much faster rate, thus making it more readily available to stakeholders who rely on this data.

even with promising breakthroughs in data collection and research, there is still an emotional toll naveen faces. for this lifelong researcher, the penguins make him think of the future for his own children and grandchildren. according to naveen, what we see happening in antarctica is a sobering glimpse of what the future for humans could look like.

below ron speaks on the emotional toll his research has had on him and the difficult changes he has has seen first hand, but also explains what we must do to keep making progress.

i would like everybody to know that being with penguins is very special. it makes your heart thump through your parka. it brings a big smile to your face. smile, think about penguins, think about saving the planet.

– ron naveen

but after decades of work, naveen doesn’t plan on slowing down, and he isn’t the only one. penguin conservation is an effort being led by many people, and the collaborative hard work of naveen and others continues to support the wonderful world of penguins.

this story was produced as part of the planet forward summer seminar in multimedia storytelling.

the brick is known as ‘filter cake,’ and although they are not yet ready to be used in construction, the company is producing up to 100 tons of filter cake bricks each day that would have otherwise been shipped to landfills.

by replacing raw materials with recycled ones, the production of filter cake bricks also means that there will be less need for quarrying, which produces over 15.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year in the uk alone.