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Accelerated decarbonisation of steelmaking, oil refining and petrochemical industries is essential for climate change mitigation. Drawing on three longitudinal case studies of these industries in the UK, this synthesis article makes a comparative analysis of their varying low-carbon reorientation speeds. The paper uses the triple embeddedness framework to analyse five factors (policy support, international competition, financial health, technical feasibility, corporate strategy and mindset) that explain why UK oil refineries have in recent years been comparatively the fastest in their low-carbon reorientation and UK steelmakers the slowest. We find that policy support has been more beneficial for refining and petrochemicals than for steel, although recent government deals with steelmakers addressed this imbalance. International competition has been high for steel and petrochemicals and comparatively lower for refining …