Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero C/O Ministerial Correspondence Team
Level 3
55 Whitehall London SW1A 2HP
United Kingdom
Dear Secretary of State,
I am writing in my capacity as chair of the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (“TV ERF”) project board representing seven Councils in the north-east (Darlington, Durham, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Redcar & Cleveland, Stockton) (“the Councils”).
For the past few years, the Councils have been working in partnership to find a sustainable long-term solution for treating our region’s residual waste – which is the waste left over after recycling. In addition to pursuing ever-higher recycling and waste reduction targets, treating the remaining residual waste (circa 450,000 tonnes a year produced by 1.5 million people living and working across the region) will be achieved through the procurement of a new Energy-from-Waste (“EfW”) facility known as the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (“TV ERF”). This vital facility will ensure that the Councils can continue to fulfil their statutory duty for safely managing the region’s waste in the long- term while also offering a range of additional environmental and economic benefits.
By procuring a new facility and specifying the location of the project, the Councils are able to overcome a local monopoly situation; guarantee best value for money for the Councils; and both remediate and economically-regenerate a contaminated brownfield site in the Tees Valley left vacant by the closure of British Steel. In addition, significant weighting has been placed on the delivery of social value in the procurement scoring, which will deliver additional positive outcomes for the local community. Furthermore, with the right policy and economic conditions, the project is ideally situated within the East Coast Cluster and could become among the first of the UK’s EfW facilities to deploy Carbon Capture and Storage (“CCS”) – potentially contributing net-negative emissions to the UK’s net-zero targets.
The project partners applied to DESNZ for business model funding support under Phase 2: Track 1 of the Government’s carbon cluster sequencing process in 2022, which would have allowed the TV ERF to be developed with CCS from the outset. The project was shortlisted but was unfortunately unsuccessful, with just three projects (none EfW) from the East Coast Cluster progressed to negotiations. However, we believe the TV ERF project remains well placed to apply again in future phases and could play a valuable role in the pursuit of national net-zero targets. The TV ERF has been designed to be ‘carbon- capture ready’, thereby ensuring that sufficient space remains on site to allow the retrofitting of carbon-capture infrastructure to be installed in future, should an opportunity to do so arise.
After a delay to the procurement resulting from national and local uncertainty around electricity grid capacity, the project partners received two viable connection offers from the local Distribution Network Operator (DNO) earlier in 2024, which has allowed the procurement process to restart with two remaining Tenderers – both of which secured full (Reserved Matters) planning consent in 2023 for their respective proposals.
Both Tenderers also applied to the Environment Agency for an Environmental Permit. Following a rigorous consultation process with both statutory and non-statutory consultees, one Tenderer has received a draft decision to grant the Permit (pending further comments in relation to the draft decision) in July 2024, while the second application, submitted later, is awaiting acceptance as “duly made” by the Environment Agency.
On current timescales, Optimised Final Tenders are expected to be received by the end of this year and a Preferred Tenderer appointed in 2025 – with the facility entering full operation from 2029.
The TV ERF will allow the partner authorities to discharge their statutory duty for safely managing the region’s waste over the long-term and will support our shared goal of sending zero-waste to landfill – reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared with landfill, with or without CCS. It remains complementary to ongoing efforts to recycle more and will contribute to the regeneration of the British Steel site, while offering employment and wider social value benefits to the local community. The capacity of the TV ERF has been carefully specified to meet the needs of the region over its lifetime across a range of performance and growth scenarios – although delay and uncertainty to national recycling and waste policy reforms over the past six years have made long-term planning very challenging for all local authorities. The project exists, and is permitted, within a mature and robust regulatory framework covering planning, environmental protection and public health.
The TV ERF remains the most secure, reliable, safe and affordable solution for making the most of waste left over after recycling in the region. We understand you may have recently received correspondence from a third party about this project, so I wanted to take this opportunity to emphasise just how beneficial and critical the TV ERF is to the region and to stress the important role the new Labour Government can play in supporting local authorities by delivering long-term policy clarity and stability for recycling and waste management.
More information about the project is available at www.tverf.co.uk
Yours sincerely
DENISE MCGUCKIN
Managing Director Hartlepool Borough Council and Chair of Project Board
cc:
Steve Reed MP – Secretary of State, Defra
Mary Creagh MP – Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Defra
Angela Rayner MP – Secretary of State, HCLG Anna Turley MP
Cllr Alec Brown, Leader of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council
