PD Ports, the owner of Teesport in the UK, welcomed the Government’s decision yesterday to approve MGT Power’s 295MW wood fuelled power station, which is to be built on the South Dock area of the port.
One of the largest biomass plants set to be built in the UK, the Tees Renewable Energy Plant will produce enough carbon neutral sustainable energy to power 600,000 homes across the North East of England.
The announcement is very good news for the area. MGT Power’s £500m investment could bring a new impetus to the area in terms of the size of its renewable energy power station. MGT Power has a grid connection agreement. It has secured long term supply contracts for biomass feedstock from managed sustainable forests and plantations, and suppliers ready to take on plant construction. The port has the plans ready for a new quaywall and crane capacity at Teesdock. The plant will require two to three years for construction and will be operational by autumn 2012.
The project calls for a 295MW base load renewable electricity generator which is claimed to be one of the world’s largest renewable energy projects of any type. The project will bring 600 construction jobs followed by 150 onsite jobs for up to 40 years. Once operational, the renewable plant will spend over £30m per year on maintenance and support services. With the Tees Valley’s core industrial expertise and experience, most of this spending is set to be absorbed by local labour and firms sustaining 300 to 400 indirect jobs each year for the local economy.
The 295MW plant will be constructed on land adjacent to the main southern dock at Teesport, on the south bank of the River Tees. In addition to its deepwater facilities, the plant is well served by arterial transport routes such as the A66, A19, A1 and the main East coast rail network.
It is also close to the National Grid electricity transmission system and MGT Teesside, the developer for the project and a wholly-owned subsidiary of MGT Power Ltd, has a transmission contract with the National Grid Company to export power from the site from 2012.
The project will comprise a single, circulating fluidised bed boiler that will burn wood chip to produce steam. The steam will be used to turn a steam turbine, which will in turn power a generator to produce electricity.
The biomass feedstock for the Tees Renewable Energy Plant will be sourced from certified sustainable forestry projects developed by the MGT team and partners in North and South America and the Baltic States. These projects will provide clean burning woodchip, which delivers 95% greenhouse gas savings in comparison to coal or natural gas through the life cycle and will not use high quality land suitable for food crops.
The plant will use some 2.4m tons of woodchips per annum and will operate at baseload 24 hours a day, year round.
Once operational in late 2012, the plant will save 1.2m tons of CO2 per year and will account for 5.5% of the UK’s renewable electricity target.
MGT Power had received planning approval from Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council in November 2008 and has now received the final approval from the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) to proceed (known as the Section 36 approval).
‘With MGT Power’s plan becoming a reality, we will see a new traffic flow of over 2m tons per annum through the port. This is great news’, said PD Ports’ group chief executive David Robinson.
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