By Renewable Energy Focus Staff

Air Products has secured planning permission from Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council for its Tees Valley Renewable Energy Facility.

The advanced gasification energy from waste (EfW) scheme, located at the New Energy and Technology Business Park near Billingham, Teesside will convert pre-processed household and commercial waste currently going to landfill into renewable power for up to 50,000 homes in the North East of England.

The landfill will be capable of producing 49 MW of electricity from about 300,000 tonnes of waste and, according to Air Products, is one of the largest advanced gasification projects planned in the UK.

The plant is Air Products’ first advanced gasification energy scheme to be developed in the UK. Air Products anticipates that between 500 and 700 people will be employed during the project’s construction phase with 50 permanent jobs being created once the facility enters commercial operations.

The company hopes to build up to five advanced gasification plants in the UK in the coming years, amounting to an investment of more than £1 billion, it says, and with the potential to generate around 250 MW of electricity.

Ian Williamson, European Hydrogen and Bioenergy Director at Air Products, says: “Air Products, along with our technology partner, Alter NRG, see Tees Valley as the first of a number of advanced gasification facilities that we wish to develop in the UK.

In the longer-term, our technology can also produce renewable hydrogen and is being considered for a demonstration of Waste2Tricity’s fuel cell technology. So our renewable energy facility could also play a part in the further development of the hydrogen economy, an area in which Air Products already has considerable experience.”

Subject to the financing of the project given current support mechanisms and securing environmental permitting consent from the UK Environment Agency, work on the site could start next year, with commercial operations starting in 2014.