Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility

Viridor’s proposed Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) will be located on the Teesworks site in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland. The ERF, once operational, will process around 450,000 tonnes per year of residual waste from the Tees Valley Authorities, Durham County Council and Newcastle City Council areas. The facility will use this waste to generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 60,000 homes. Other future uses of the facility include exporting heat to local users, and extracting carbon dioxide from flue gases to be transferred to a local carbon storage scheme (proposed) in the Teeside area.

Hardisty Jones was instructed to support in the development of an Economic Regeneration and Social Value (ERSV) proposal as part of a contractual bid process for the ERF. Viridor was committed to making all reasonable efforts to maximise its score on ERSV elements, as it was potentially a key differentiator between bidders.

Analysing Local Needs in the ERF Study Area

We delivered a Local Needs Analysis (LNA) to set out the socio-economic conditions in the Tees Valley, Durham and Newcastle areas. The LNA focused on four key topics: economic and social ambitions; employment, training and skills; business engagement; and enhancing communities.

Focusing on the four key topics, we reviewed relevant policy and research for each of the areas, carried out analysis of publically available socio-economic data, and analysed responses from discussions that Viridor had with key stakeholders. This helped to build a picture of the labour market, such as economic activity and skill levels, deprivation levels, commuting patterns, access to public transport, and employment and business counts in relevant sectors (i.e. construction, aggregates/minerals).

Economic regeneration and social value proposals

Alongside an assessment of existing social value activities within Viridor, the findings of the LNA were used to help inform the development of ERSV propositions that would be carried out across the study areas. We engaged with Viridor to refine and agree commitments to be included in the ERSV section of the Works Delivery Plan.

The ERSV ambitions were structured around the following topic areas:

• Proposals to support local employment through creation of local jobs and local advertising of job opportunities;
• Proposals to engage and retain apprentices;
• Proposals to source materials and services from local suppliers;
• Other proposals to support local employers, including SMEs; and
• Other proposals to support local and regional economic regeneration.

Viridor were successful on the competitive process to secure the ERF contract. The Tees Valley ERF secured full planning permission and is expected to be operational from 2030.

If you would like to talk to us about how we can provide technical support to help you deliver robust socio-economic inputs to a low carbon or renewable energy infrastructure project, please get in touch.