Green light for 120m Tees Valley EfW facility

At a planning committee meeting on Wednesday (October 15), the borough council gave ‘unanimous backing' to a proposal submitted by SITA UK to develop the North East Energy Recovery Centre (NEERC), which will be capable of processing 256,000 tonnes of household and commercial waste.

SITA plan to build the NEERC on land adjacent to its existing Tees Valley energy-from-waste facility at Haverton Hill near Billingham, with the plans including the provision of a railhead to lessen traffic around the site.

A spokesman for SITA UK told letsrecycle.com that the council's experience with processing industrial planning applications meant that the company was able to stick to its plan to receive approval within four months of submitting the plans in late July (see letsrecycle.com story).

He said: “Stockton is dealing with industrial plans all the time because there is a lot of industry along the River Tees. We are happy that they have been very efficient.”

SITA UK's general manager in the north-east, John Grainger, welcomed the approval and the effect it would have on the local area.

He said: “This is great news and the approval is an enormous boost for the whole north east region and will help confirm the Tees Valley as a centre for energy recovery. Construction of this plant will provide hundreds of jobs and there'll be around forty new full-time skilled jobs to run the facility when it's operational.”

“This ‘new generation' energy recovery facility, which involves an investment in the area of over £120 million, will see the development of a facility that will produce renewable energy, reduce the need for landfill and assist measures aimed at combating climate change in the region,” he added.

Electricity

The Billingham plant will produce 21MW of electricity a year, and, when combined with the adjacent plant, will allow SITA UK to process 640,000 tonnes of waste a year, producing up to 50MW of electricity.

Mr Grainger explained that they would be looking to provide heat and power produced by the NEERC to local businesses, stating that this would “greatly improve their sustainability by reducing energy needs and simultaneously reducing their carbon footprint with the reduction of use of fossil fuels”.

In particular, SITA announced that it has been working with ammonia and nitric acid manufacturer GroHow over the past six months to discuss a means of supplying energy to support the firm's infrastructure at Haverton Hill.