A permit to operate approved for a giant household waste incinerator on Teesside “important milestone”
A permit to operate approved for a giant household waste incinerator on Teesside has been described as an “important milestone”.
The Environment Agency confirmed on Wednesday that an environmental permit for the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) due to be built on land at Teesworks, near Grangetown, had been granted to waste management firm Viridor.
Sources associated with the project, which will burn 450,000 tonnes of black bag waste a year generated from several council areas across the North-East, said it was “another important milestone” and “further evidence of regulatory safety”.
Ian Preston, an installations team leader at the Environment Agency, said: “I want to reassure people that the permit will ensure that robust levels of environmental protection are met.
“Environmental law sets out these conditions, and as a regulator we are obliged to issue the permit if we can find no reason that the operator would not be able to comply.”
Emissions from a similar energy from waste facility operated by Viridor in Beddington, Surrey have exceeded permitted levels on dozens of occasions, as reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service earlier this year.
A total of 61 breaches of an Environment Agency permit occurred between March 2019 and February this year, mostly concerning carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ‘volatile organic compounds’.
A spokeswoman for Viridor, which hasn’t commented on the permit approval for the TVERF, previously said: “We take our environmental responsibility incredibly seriously and continuously monitor and report our emissions, in line with our environmental permit, as part of our ongoing operations.”
With the permit in place and planning permission for the TVERF site already granted in 2023, the next step is a decision by the project board on whether to confirm Viridor as the ‘preferred tenderer’, which is expected by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, potential agreement on any contractual arrangements – termed ‘financial close’ – which would be expected to follow should the tender be awarded to Viridor is likely to be later this year.
Decision making at the start of the project several years ago was delegated to senior council officials – for example chief executives and managing directors – from the relevant local authorities who sit on the project board.
However some local politicians unhappy at the prospect at the energy from waste facility and who have expressed environmental and financial concerns have attempted to wrest back some control over the process.
In Redcar and Cleveland a motion tabled sought to have elected members agree political, financial and officer support should be withdrawn with immediate effect.
But after an intervention from council leader Alec Brown, who argued more information was needed before such a firm stance could be taken, it was never voted on.
A separate motion which was adopted later determined that the council’s democratically-elected cabinet should make the decision on final sign off, not the managing director.
The LDRS previously approached council leaders from the other partner authorities – Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle – to determine their current view of the incinerator and what discussions had taken place at their respective councils.
But leaders at Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Darlington and Newcastle all failed to respond, with the only comment coming from Councillor Andrew Husband, the leader of Durham County Council, who said: “We are yet to commit either way and we are undertaking a period of consultation.”
If chosen, Viridor will design, build and finance the TVERF with the councils paying the money back through the cost of the service provided over the lifetime of the awarded contract which could extend to 30 or 40 years.
Statements previously issued on behalf of the TVERF project board have described a “critical and essential piece of infrastructure” and the “safest, most reliable and most sustainable way to manage our region’s residual waste”.
Existing contracts with the private sector are coming to an end with the local authorities clubbing together to jointly procure their own waste management solution in the form of the TVERF, which it is also said will achieve economies of scale.
Critics claim there is enough incinerator capacity on Teesside already and other methods of waste management should be looked at.