Public Funding for The North East of England Process Industry Cluster Limited

Olefins are the core platform chemicals within the chemical industry and the focus on the Centre for Circular Chemical Economy (CCCE). Olefins are widely used as raw materials in the manufacture of chemical and polymer products like plastic, detergent, adhesive, rubber, and food packaging. Globally, the vast majority of olefins are produced using unsustainable petrochemicals and the only way to make these supply chains sustainable is to utilise circular or biomass feedstocks. Therefore, the utilisation of circular economy to produce sustainable olefins is critical for the long-term future of the chemical industry. A source of sustainable olefins also provides an opportunity to grow the downstream olefin derivative supply chains within the UK, which would generate significant investment and create thousands of jobs. Teesside is home to one of the largest chemical industry clusters in Europe. A large part of Teesside's chemical industry is linked to the olefin supply chain, including the manufacture of olefins and the utilisation of olefin derivatives. The aim of this project is to produce a strategic roadmap for how a sustainable olefin and olefin derivatives supply chain can be created on Teesside. This will involve the identification of the potential supply chains, mapping of available feedstocks, identification or process routes and the integration with circular business models. Overall, this will enable the production of a report which will be disseminated to key current and potential stakeholders within a sustainable olefins value chain. This project will be led by the North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) with support from Teesside University and the Centre for Circular for Chemical Economy.

The Net Zero Teesside project, together with its associated Transportation and Storage project, the Northern Endurance Partnership, create a pathway to facilitate decarbonisation of the Teesside industrial cluster in the mid 2020s. Net Zero Teesside and the Northern Endurance Partnership are led by bp and leverage world class expertise from across industry including CF Fertilisers, BOC Gases, ENI, Equinor, National Grid, Sembcorp, Shell and Total, with confirmed support from many more stakeholders and subcontractors. The project anchor is a world first flexible gas power plant with Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) which will "compliment rather than compete with" renewables. It will capture ~2 million tonnes of CO2 annually from 2026, decarbonising 750MW of flexible power and enabling a reduction of Teesside's emissions by one third through partnership with industrial stakeholders including CF, BOC and Sembcorp. CO2 will be permanently and safely stored in a well understood large geological aquifer located in the Southern North Sea. NZT addresses widely accepted strategic national priorities - most notably to secure green recovery and drive new jobs and economic growth in regions most hit by the pandemic. NZT will also deliver on the Chancellor's pledge in the 2020 Budget to "support the construction of the UK's first CCUS power plant." The Committee on Climate Change identified both gas power with CCUS and hydrogen production using natural gas with CCUS as critical to the UK's decarbonisation strategy, and gas power with CCUS has been independently estimated to reduce the overall UK power system cost to consumers by £19bn by 2050 (compared to alternative options such as energy storage). The £61mn industry contribution coupled with £28mn grant funding should enable Teesside to subsequently build this billion-pound decarbonisation project. Private financing for CCUS projects and flexible gas power with CCUS will all be world firsts, transformative to the industry and playing a pivotal role in the UK's trajectory toward Net Zero. In conjunction with the Northern Endurance Partnership, the development is estimated to support and safeguard between 35% and 70% of existing manufacturing jobs in Tees Valley, with an annual gross benefit of up to £450mn for the Teesside region and the support of up to 5,500 direct jobs during construction. NZT would showcase a broad range of decarbonisation technologies and underpin the UK's Clean Growth strategy, securing green recovery, driving economic growth in regions hit by the pandemic and kickstarting a new market for CCUS.

The Industrial Clusters Mission has set an ambition to establish at least one low-carbon industrial cluster by 2030 and the world's first net-zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040\. The Tees Valley is the UK's most compact and integrated industrial cluster with a radius of 5 miles. The cluster includes several of the UK's top CO2 emitters and is responsible for 8.8 million tonnes of CO2; the Tees Valley industrial cluster generates £12bn of exports annually, employs over 12,000 people and currently contributes some £2.5bn to UK GVA. This project will produce a plan which outlines how the Tees Valley Industrial Cluster can become net zero by 2040\. It will identify the concepts required both on a 'plant by plant' basis and the technologies and infrastructure that would then be needed to integrate and link them together into a net-zero cluster. It will indicate the expected costs and highlight the key enablers and barriers to implementation together with suggested timelines and the need and opportunity for innovation. The project will provide the evidence base that will support industrial companies corporate decisions on decarbonisation as well as regional and national Government in making the most focussed and effective policy decisions; it will provide the information needed for companies to build on, when undertaking more detailed design and piloting of technologies. The project will share its findings with other industrial clusters and more widely to ensure lessons learned are shared across the UK. This project follows on from the successful stage 1 bid, during which an approach was developed to produce a Cluster Plan for the Tees Valley Industrial Cluster. The cluster plan to be developed is expected to identify the most appropriate range of technologies and potential pathways for the various industrial producers and energy generators in the Tees Valley, considering both existing and future new entrants. It is expected that this plan will combine carbon capture at scale, fuel switching to Hydrogen, integration of renewables, low carbon energy sources, feedstocks changes, together with improved process and energy efficiencies.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

Awaiting Public Project Summary

This project brings together end-users from several industrial sectors, IT service providers, enterprise software and hardware vendors and key e-Science researchers to overcome current limitations in IEC (Grid) infrastructure by building on the latest research. We will enable the two key elements of successful IEC-enabled virtual organisations: dynamic collaboration to achieve shared business goals, and dynamic provision and exploitation of services in a shared infrastructure with decentralised, autonomic management and commercial-grade security. The project will demonstrate this through well-chosen application scenarios from the finance and manufacturing sectors, covering the entire value chain including ICT providers, application vendors and end-users. The results will be widely disseminated to provide role models and best practice in exploiting IEC technology for business benefits.