The TV ERF is a critical piece of infrastructure for the North-East.
We believe that this important facility will provide the only safe, reliable, sustainable and affordable solution for treating rubbish left over after recycling (known as “residual waste”).
Residual waste is the waste left over after residents and businesses have separated all they can for recycling – through their local kerbside collection services or household waste recycling centres, for example. This waste is typically anything that goes in the general rubbish bin.
Each and every year, more than 1.5 million people living and working across the North-East produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of residual waste, which would go have to go landfill unless a solution exists to put it to good use instead. That is the vital role of the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TV ERF).
Even as we aim to recycle more and more, population and economic growth means the amount of residual waste in the region is likely to remain fairly consistent over the next three decades, so the TV ERF has been designed with this in mind.
The TV ERF is an energy-from-waste (EfW) plant which uses the general rubbish left over after recycling as a fuel to produce heat and electrical energy. This puts the waste to best use and avoids sending it to landfill, which is the only viable alternative.
There are currently around 60 similar energy-from-waste plants in operation or construction around the United Kingdom and these facilities have a proven track record for being a safe and sustainable way of treating the nation’s general rubbish in accordance with the Waste Hierarchy.
In fact, similar plants have already been operating in the North-East, treating local waste, successfully for decades now and the TV ERF will provide a long-term replacement for older existing facilities.
Once built, from 2029 onwards, the TV ERF will process up to 450,000 tonnes of general rubbish produced across the North-East each year and use it to generate up to 49.9MW of electricity – enough to power the equivalent of 60,000 homes. The plant is also capable of exporting the heat it produces to district-heating networks and could become a low or zero-carbon source of heat and power for new neighbouring businesses.
The facility will be located on part of the former steel works at Teesworks in Redcar. The TV ERF will play a role in supporting plans to regenerate this brownfield industrial site and could act as a catalyst to attract other new businesses – in fact, the regeneration benefits of the TV ERF project have already begun through extensive remediation of the site in preparation for the TV ERF.
The TV ERF will support hundreds of jobs during the construction period and up to 50 permanent positions once operational.
This site is allocated for waste management infrastructure in the local development plan and has excellent connections to both the National Grid and the local road network.
This location also offers potential for the TV ERF to export heat, as well as electricity, to future nearby users. Additionally, in the longer term, the TV ERF is ideally located to connect to carbon capture and storage infrastructure as part of the East Coast Cluster.
The project partners, led by Hartlepool Borough Council, are currently undertaking a procurement process to find an experienced organisation to design, build, finance and operate the TV ERF. This process is overseen by a governance board representing all seven partner councils. More information about the procurement process can be found in our detailed FAQs.
The project partners are committed to keeping local residents and stakeholders informed as the project progresses and, once a Preferred Tendered has been selected, we will make an announcement. This is expected in 2025.
The TV ERF partner authorities each have a statutory duty to safely manage residual waste produced in their respective regions to ensure it doesn’t accumulate and pose a threat to the environment or public health.
This is a vital public service and core business for all local councils. The costs involved are an unavoidable and necessary part of councils’ normal day-to-day expenditure, while the infrastructure needed to deliver these services also comes with costs which must be budgeted for and financed – whether out-sourced or delivered directly by an authority.
Existing contractual arrangements for dealing with the region’s waste are coming to an end, so the project partners are jointly procuring a new solution. This partnership approach will share costs between the authorities while delivering economies of scale.
The partners have carefully prepared a detailed strategic and commercial case for the TV ERF, considering many other options, over a period of several years. This innovative partnership will achieve economies of scale for each authority, while delivering the best operational expertise at the best value.
Through the procurement process, significant weighting has been given to the creation of social value for the local community or, in other words, delivery of additional community investment and benefits beyond the core service and associated jobs and supply-chain opportunities (both during construction and long-term operation).
This could include, for example, apprenticeships and training opportunities for local people, investment in community facilities and/or education programmes. We look forward to being able to share more details about this once the procurement process is concluded.
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