We’re proud of our impressive track record when it comes to reducing our carbon emissions. Since 2000, we’ve reduced the carbon intensity of our manufacturing by 55% by innovating and evolving our projects and processes to reduce our environmental footprint. We’ve pioneered groundbreaking technology, opening the UK’s first carbon capture and utilisation plant, and found ways to give back to our environment through various stewardship and conservation schemes. Now, we are pleased to announce, all our efforts in this area have been recognised with a couple of high EcoVadis scores.

What is EcoVadis?

In a nutshell, they are the world’s largest provider of business sustainability ratings. They evaluate how well an organisation has integrated the principles of sustainability and CSR into their business and management systems by evaluating four key areas: environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement. The business will then receive an overall score, providing them with solid and universal credentials to share with suppliers, customers and even internal teams, as well as a baseline that they can improve upon.

TCE take home gold and British Salt bank a bronze

As the first year of application, we were thrilled to gain such good results for both TCE and British Salt. With a score that not only puts us in the top 5% of companies rated in our industry (manufacturers of basic chemicals, fertilisers and nitrogen compounds, plastics and synthetic rubber) but also in the top 5% of all companies rated within the EcoVadis network (more than 125,000 companies), TCE took home a gold medal. British Salt put in another excellent performance, achieving a bronze medal with an overall score that put them in the top 9% of salt extraction businesses and in the 83rd percentile of all companies rated on the platform.

These scores are an important demonstration of our commitment to our customers, who are becoming more conscious of supplier sustainability performance, and allows us to further support their sustainability goals.

Head of Energy and Carbon Capture, Rob Hudson says of these achievements: “This is a fantastic achievement and the result of a lot of hard work. It represents a significant step in proving our sustainability credentials to our current and future customer base. Critically, we have the track record to back it up and the plans to sustain it – a great effort by Jen and team to pull this off.”

We welcome this recognition of our continuous improvement and now have a baseline to improve upon. The learnings from this process will help us to strengthen and improve our sustainability management system going forward.

After over 100 years of industrial use, we are transforming the Lagoons at Cledford Lane into a wildlife reserve. At British Salt we are always looking for ways to proactively invest back into the local area and the community. This project allows us to do just that, as well as set a route for other businesses with portfolios of brownfield land to follow.

What is the aim of the project?

The scheme will revitalize the former industrial land to create safe public access to large swaths of the site that have, up until now, been inaccessible. The restoration will protect and enhance unique habitats that have already sprung up on the site and will preserve and enhance the rare biodiversity of the land and secure the future of the site for the next 30 years as a haven for wildlife.

What was the site originally used for?

The 70-acre site is made up of a network of 8 settling lagoons that date back to 1896. Originally used by the soda ash and salt purification industries in Middlewich, the land was used for settlement and storage of non-toxic process waste materials.

Tell us more about the build

In a bid to keep things local and in an effort to mitigate disruption for residents and minimise the works’ overall carbon footprint, the project plans, in part, to use excess soil from the construction of the local bypass.

The land will be regenerated with environmental impact front of mind. Circa 200,000m3 of restoration soils generated from developments in the local area, such as the Middlewich Bypass construction, will be used to ‘cap and restore’ the land, ensuring minimal disruption to local communities while reducing the overall carbon footprint of the project. Water collection system improvements are also planned to ensure that rain falling on the site does not come into contact with waste material. This improvement of the water discharge quality will also improve the long-term health of Sanderson’s Brook, with the aim of supporting the biodiversity of this watercourse.

Why are brownfield projects like this one important?

The restoration of the lagoons is a positive step in the preservation of dwindling biodiversity in the UK, which is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world*. The project is not only an opportunity to create a valuable environmental asset of regional importance, but also a chance for the public to access much of the site for the first time in over a century.

How will the local community be able to enjoy this space?

A set of circular footpaths will connect to existing local routes so local residents, walkers and dog walkers will be able to enjoy the restored site safely and without detriment to the valuable flora and fauna.

How does this project relate to legislation and Biodiversity Units?

We’re working with specialist partners Green Earth Developments (“GEDG”) to deliver this project, which is one of the first schemes to use the provisions of the Environment Act 2021 to deliver Biodiversity Units. These units can assist other developments in the area that now have to deliver a 10% net gain in terms of biodiversity as part of their planning permissions. In essence Biodiversity units from this scheme can be used to offset losses on other sites thus ensuring Cheshire East has an overall net gain.

Our Sustainability Manager at British Salt, Jennifer Haynes, said of the project: “Good stewardship of our legacy assets is a real focus for us and the opportunity to make a positive impact is really exciting. We really hope the approach for this project provides a route for others to follow, showing how industrial businesses can use what they already hold to make a significant environmental contribution.

“We plan to set up a local Liaison Committee to help steer the long-term management of the site ensuring that its place as a Middlewich community asset is assured for future generations.”

Sources

*State of Nature – Natural England, Pete Brotherton, 2023

Having announced the carbon capture and utilisation project in July 2019 and commenced on site in late March 2020, the project is now nearing completion.

So far, the project has taken 90,000 hours of onsite time with over 30 different contractors all playing key roles. From High Voltage specialists, process engineers and specialist equipment installers to operations management, 1,000 tonne crane operators and groundworks contractors, the complex project has needed a diverse and select group to ensure it is delivered. Coupled with this, components to build the plant have been sourced from across the globe and shipped from 50 different countries including China, Turkey, Belgium, Denmark as well as from across the UK.

The construction of the new plant has been carefully choreographed around live manufacturing operations on the Winnington site. Tata Chemicals Europe’s (TCE) combined heat and power plant, from which the carbon dioxide will be captured from flue gas, needed to operate as normal to generate steam and electricity for TCE’s manufacturing operations. The sodium bicarbonate plant on the Winnington site continued to make high grade product used in the manufacture of medical treatments and food.

Delivery of the CCU project has also had to fit alongside the largest demolition project in the UK in the past 12 months with the removal of the decommissioned 33m high calcium carbonate plant and 65m high kiln building that was part of the old Winnington soda ash plant.

Working with TCE to drive the co-ordination and delivery of all components of the project, Revolution Projects have provided construction management services with a “can do” attitude ensuring the complex construction of the carbon capture plan is safely undertaken without disruption to live operations on the Winnington site. Revolution Projects knowledge and expertise has supported the TCE team in maintaining a high standard of Health and Safety performance despite the challenging working environment. To date, there have been no lost time injuries and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic has only resulted in limited disruption to the project.

Phill Grocott, Revolution Projects, said:

“The Tata Chemicals Europe CCU project is a ground-breaking project in the UK and we’re delighted to have been able to support TCE to deliver this project. Industrial projects of this size always have different challenges like working in alongside the live manufacturing operations. We’ve worked closely with TCE, integrating into their project team, to help ensure safe and timely progress.”

Stewart Prentice, TCE Project Manager, said:

“Revolution Projects have been excellent partners in the execution of this pathfinding and complex project. They have worked very closely with the TCE project team to deliver timely, effective construction management; and been instrumental in the project achieving a safety performance to be proud of.”

We are pleased to announce that our Carbon Capture and Usage Project has been shortlisted for the Integrated Energy: Innovation award by Association of Decentralised Energy (ADE).

The ADE is a trade association that brings together industrial and public sectors to advocate on the priorities for the UK in achieving net zero carbon emissions.

The ADE annual awards showcase innovation, best practice and achievements across heat, power, flexibility and efficiency and provide an opportunity for organisations and professionals from across the sector to celebrate success and collective attainment.

The integrated energy category that Tata Chemicals Europe has been shortlisted for recognises projects that bring together any combination of heat, power, flexibility and efficiency to provide a truly holistic solution. The judges were looking for good news stories to help celebrate and promote the decentralised energy industry’s achievements: how projects have made a difference, the journey that people have been on and the impact that’s been made. The award ceremony is being held online on the 16th June.

Peter Houghton, Director of Energy at Tata Chemicals Europe said:

“We are delighted that our carbon capture project has been shortlisted for the Integrated Energy: Innovation award by the Association of Decentralised Energy.

“Our project is a real pathfinder for the UK. Not only will it be the UK’s largest carbon capture plant, but it will also help to pave the way for future larger scale carbon capture and storage projects by demonstrating the technical and economic viability of the technology required to remove carbon dioxide from power station emissions.

“We are able to help make this vital next step because our project uses the captured carbon dioxide as a raw material in the manufacture of sodium bicarbonate. Having an industrial use for the captured carbon means that we are not dependent on finding a storage solution which comes with much higher costs and project risks.

“The gas we capture will be purified and liquified, before being used to make high quality, pharmaceutical grade sodium bicarbonate that is used in medicines and exported to over 60 countries across the globe.

“Construction of the plant started last year and we are now looking forward to commissioning the plant in the near future. Once operational, the plant will capture 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. The equivalent of removing 20,000 cars from the roads of the UK.”

To find out more about this project, please read more here.

Storm Christoph, flooding and COVID-19 notwithstanding, the development of the ground-breaking carbon capture and utilisation plant at our Winnington site is continuing to press ahead and is on track to be tested and commissioned in the first half of 2021.

• Carbon Capture Plant Progress Overview

With much of the process equipment and buildings already in place by early winter, the focus of the project over the past 4 months has been on installing 4km of pipework and 14km of electrical cabling needed to operate the carbon capture plant.
The largest pipework installed is the 1.5m diameter ducting that transports flue gases from the CHP plant. To give an idea of scale, that means that in certain sections, it’s large enough to drive a Mini through! Emissions enter the ducting at 100oC and travel 140m to the inlet of the CCU plant. Completion of this pipework marks a major milestone for the project.
Much of the other pipework arrived on site from Studley Engineering in prefabricated sections ready to connect the process equipment together.

• Insulating Tanks for Liquified CO2 Storage

Other major work included commencing insulating the liquefied CO2 storage tanks.

These tanks store the captured carbon dioxide at -24.1oC and 17.3 Barg. To do this, the three 22m long storage tanks needed to be surrounded with scaffolding to enable access and then covered to ensure they are kept dry throughout the process. An outer cladding, supported off the tanks by foam spacing pieces, was then placed around the storage tanks. This work paves the way for a special insulation mixture to be pumped in to fill the gap between the tank and the cladding in early March.

The stored CO2 is used to supply our sodium bicarbonate plant. After having been converted back to a gas, the CO2 is transported over half a kilometre to the manufacturing plant in a pipe that has been installed in a trench.

• Strong Progress Despite Severe Weather Conditions

As with any project running at this time of year, the weather has played a part in our progress. In January, the Northwich area was hard-hit by Storm Christoph. The severe flooding that resulted was the worst on record, with the water level rising over 70cm above the previous high-water record.

For the first time in living memory, the building used to house pumps that abstract water from the River Weaver flooded. The photos show one of the project’s two new river water pumps packed in a transport crate outside the building surrounded by water. As a result, it had to be removed and overhauled. Fortunately, the second pump was unaffected and has now been installed. It is now ready to pump water to the CCU plant to aid cooling of the process, and the now overhauled pump will be installed to sit alongside it in the coming weeks.

• Record Investigation Helps Make Crucial Connections

Other challenges included connecting the new drainage system for the plant to the existing network of drainage culverts on the site. Much of the existing network was built in the 1880s when the original soda ash plant was built. Fantastic records of the original plant have been kept. However, in-depth investigation into over 400,000 drawings of the soda ash works and the updates to the site over the past 140 years was required before making the final connections!

Projects Director, Ladan Iravanian, commented:

“Whilst much of the very visual parts of the plant were installed before the winter months, the site over the last couple of months has been a hive of activity. Often, we’ve had over 70 people from many technical and engineering disciplines working together in a COVID secure manner.

“The purpose of this phase of the project is to make sure that the process equipment is mechanically and electrically connected and we are ready to start testing and commissioning the plant in the first half of 2021.”

British Salt has this week fired up two new boilers for the first time at the manufacturing site on Cledford Lane in Middlewich. Almost exactly 12 months on from the day Middlewich town centre stopped to watch a giant convoy with two 90 tonne boilers being carefully moved through the streets, British Salt’s major £8m project is nearing completion.

Likened to a heart transplant operation by Project Manager Stewart Prentice, the boilers are the beating heart of British Salt’s manufacturing process, providing steam used to generate electricity to power the site and the heat required for the salt making process. The new boilers replace those installed nearly 50 years ago when the site was first built. Far more energy efficient, they will lower emissions from the plant below current and future regulatory standards, producing less than half the NOx emissions and reducing the carbon footprint of the site.

Since the delivery in November 2019, the project team has been hard at work installing the boilers with state-of-the-art control systems that will make their operation highly automated. Despite coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, progress on the project continued over the spring and summer. Working closely with over 20 contractors, many drawn locally from Cheshire and Merseyside, the team has implemented new methods of working to ensure that social distancing measures could be observed.

In the past week, the project team lit the boilers for the first time and started testing steam production as part of a carefully managed programme. The testing involves producing steam at lower volumes and building up to full operational levels to prove the new heart of the plant is ready to take the load without missing a beat. Once ready, the manufacturing plant will then switch over from the old plant, which will be on standby for a period of time to provide back up.

The £8m investment sanctioned by British Salt’s parent company, Tata Chemicals Europe, is the largest single investment in the plant since it was first built in 1969. With an operational life of 30 years, the new boilers have secured the future of salt production in the area for the foreseeable future, supporting hundreds of local jobs. The story does not end there though as Tata Chemicals Europe and British Salt are working on plans for further exciting investments in the plant as demand for high purity salt products continues to be strong from customers across the world.

Projects Director, Ladan Iravanian, said: “2020 has been a really challenging year to deliver projects as the pandemic has disrupted normally stable supply chains and meant we’ve had to find new ways of working. Despite this, our project team and our contractors have worked extremely hard to ensure we deliver this major investment. It’s great to see the testing of the new boiler plant kick-off and we’re excited to integrate the new plant into our existing manufacturing operations.

“We are now looking to the future again and considering how we can how we can invest in our British Salt operations to meet global demand for our high quality, high purity salt products.”

This story featured in the Winsford and Middlewich Guardian on the 7th November 2020 and can also be seen here: https://www.winsfordguardian.co.uk/news/18853257.british-salt-fires-middlewichs-new-8-million-boilers/

The past three months have seen strong progress, with the Carbon Capture and Utilisation plant at our Winnington site starting to take shape.

In early September we hit a major milestone in the project. The 48m tall absorber column and the 27m tall stripper tower, the former weighing 93 tonnes were both lifted into place, taking their place adjacent to the 60m tall CHP stack.

Meticulous planning meant that, whilst the preparation for this took months, it took only an incredible 50 minutes to transform the skyline with the actual lift of each one. Reliant on good weather, lifting of equipment of this size is no mean feat, requiring two large cranes equivalent to those used for large infrastructure projects like bridge building.

During this period, we also placed the three large CO2 storage tanks in their final position and installed the majority of the main process skids, including the liquefaction unit.

The liquefaction unit is the final stage of the CCU production process. Concentrated carbon dioxide gas leaves the stripper tower and is cooled, compressed, dehydrated to remove water and filtered to remove any fine impurities. As a result of this process, the gas is also converted into liquid carbon dioxide that is then transferred to one of the three storage tanks. At this point it is ready for use in the manufacture of sodium bicarbonate.

Ladan Iravanian, Projects Director for Tata Chemicals Europe, said:

“It is fantastic to see the CCU plant take shape. A lot of hard work by our team and contractors made it possible to install the process vessels in early September and seeing them in place was a really exciting moment for everyone involved in the project. This milestone shows that we are on track to deliver captured carbon dioxide to our sodium bicarbonate plant in early 2021 and make use of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.”

By the end of October much of the major equipment has been installed, and over the next 4 months, the equipment will be connected with pipework, electrical and control systems and the buildings housing the process will be completed. The ducting is due to arrive in December, with the final installation due to be complete in the first half of 2021.

Development of the ground-breaking Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) Demonstration plant at our Winnington site kicked off in earnest last month. Look out for regular bulletins we will post here to share the progress of this high-profile project.

Following months of design and engineering work with Pentair Union Engineering – and several years of project planning by our project team, supported by Axis PED – we started preparing the ground for the construction of the UK’s largest plant CCU plant in March ‘20.

The first step was to demolish redundant industrial buildings on the CCU plant site, which sits adjacent to the combined heat and power (CHP) plant. The location is vital, as the CHP plant generates emissions gases when it makes steam and electricity for our operational sites in Northwich that will be used by the CCU plant. The timelapse video on the left shows the progress of the project in March ’20.

Although the project’s start date coincided with the COVID-19 outbreak and a national lockdown, we have been able to continue to make substantial progress, as the products Tata Chemicals Europe manufactures are vital raw materials that are essential to many industries. (For more information on this please click here).

PROJECT MILESTONES

To help ready the ground for the installation of the carbon capture plant, over 10,000 tonnes of stone from our demolition work nearby has been used. Alongside the preparation of the land, March also saw the first equipment delivered to the site with two compressors arriving from Belgium pictured on the right.

When operational, the CCU will capture carbon dioxide from the CHP emissions. Once captured, the gas is then purified, liquified and stored ready to be used as a raw material in the manufacture of sodium bicarbonate. In April, three tanks each capable of storing 200 tonnes of liquified carbon dioxide arrived at the construction site. The picture on the bottom left shows the tanks leaving Turkey for transfer by sea and land.

Over the coming months, we will be working closely with Hawkins Construction to lay the foundations and steel frameworks required to support and house the process equipment.

The major process vessels are due to arrive on site in June, this includes the absorber column and stripper tower which, due to their size, will arrive in sections before being joined together and lifted into place, this lift is set to take place in late August or early September.

Once these major elements of the process are in place, the remaining process equipment will be installed with the mechanical and electrical install set to start in Autumn.

The Tata Chemicals Europe CHP plant and also our exciting CCU plans are featured in a two-page article, by Energy Director Peter Houghton, in the March issue of Energy World magazine. It’s a really helpful article that sets out the role that our CHP plant plays in our operations, so we’ve published a version of it here.

It’s almost certain that every home in the UK today has something made using a product manufactured by Tata Chemicals Europe (TCE) in Northwich, Cheshire. Whether it is glass in windows and jars, washing powders and detergents, all produced using TCE’s soda ash, or food products that contain salt or sodium bicarbonate, the chemicals manufactured by TCE are the often unseen raw materials that are used by hundreds of industries to make millions of consumer products. With a long and rich history that began with pioneering the production of soda ash 145 years ago, the chemical plants in Northwich were a founding cornerstone of ICI in the early twentieth century and are now a part of the global Tata Group.

Built on four pillars, TCE today produces soda ash, sodium bicarbonate, pure vacuum dried salt, and energy in the form of steam and electricity. Food, glass, pharmaceutical, detergent and specialist chemical manufacturers all rely on TCE to provide high quality products that are used in the UK and also exported across the globe. Over the past six years, TCE has been transformed by the implementation of a bold new strategy that has changed the fortunes of the business. This transformation included the acquisition of the Winnington combined heat and power (CHP) plant in 2013, resulted in the closure of one soda ash production plant and the creation of the world’s first standalone sodium bicarbonate plant where demand now outstrips supply.

Continuing this evolution, in 2019, TCE announced plans to build the UK’s largest Carbon Capture and Utilisation plant, taking flue gases from the CHP plant and using this gas in the production of sodium bicarbonate.

Combined Heat and Power – an essential pillar in TCE’s Business

With over 380 CHP sites in the UK, in this article we take an in depth look at TCE’s CHP plant. We explore some of the unique features that enable the plant to generate the lowest cost energy for the production of soda ash and sodium bicarbonate that has lowest carbon footprint per ton produced in the world.

145 years ago, Brunner & Mond chose to locate in Northwich, Cheshire, to be near to cotton manufacturing customers in Manchester and the key raw materials required to make soda ash; brine from the vast salt deposits below Cheshire and limestone from the Peak District. Production of synthetic soda ash requires substantial heat in the form of steam. In 2000, Winnington CHP was built to replace two coal fired power stations to generate steam and electricity. At the time, up to 400MW of steam could be generated, however following the closure of the Winnington Soda Ash Works in 2014, the CHP plant was reconfigured to supply up to 200MW steam.

Unlike many industrial CHPs, where heat is a by-product of electricity generation, the chemical production process at TCE is heat intensive, requiring the continuous supply of a large volume of high pressure, high temperature steam to operate. Other than burning coal, there is no other route available to produce the required volume of high temperature steam. The plant can also generate up to 96MW of electricity which is used to power TCE’s production at two sites, to supply other industrial users connected to TCE’s private HV network and sold to energy companies and transmitted on the distribution grid.

Steam Generation Process at Winnington CHP

Winnington CHP is fueled by natural gas transported by pipe from the gas transmission network 12km away. This gas powers one of the two gas turbine trains that operate in a duty/standby configuration. The gas arrives at the site at 70 bar and is reduced to 20 bar. In the gas turbine, it is combusted with compressed air to drive the air compressor, turbine and the electricity generator. The exhaust gases leave the turbine at over 500o C and go from turbine into a heat recovery steam generator that burns additional gas to raise temperature and pressure of steam to 450o C and 70 bar.

The exhaust gases leave the heat recovery steam generator are released into the atmosphere via a 46m tall stack. From 2021 however, 40,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide will be captured, purified and liquified from these emissions and used as a raw material in the production of pharmaceutical grade sodium bicarbonate.

Electricity Generation at Winnington CHP

Each gas turbine train generates between 35-42MW/hr of electricity. This variation can be caused by different weather with high pressure, cooler conditions resulting in denser air, meaning that the compressors can drive more air into the turbine, allowing more gas to be combusted and therefore more energy generated – this can be equivalent to £6k per day of variance in electricity sales.

In addition to the generators connected to the gas turbines, the high pressure, high temperature steam goes through a steam turbine before being transferred to the chemical production plants, generating up to a further 16MW of electricity. Electricity demand on TCE’s private network is significant, with the remaining electricity exported to the distribution gird.

When starting up, the plant can go from zero to full power in around 20 minutes using a diesel generator until the compressors are running fast enough to start up the turbine. All electricity produced is at a low carbon footprint, much lower than a typical Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plant.

Water Supply

Often industrial CHP plants harness waste heat to distribute hot water in district heating pipework which is then returned to the CHP to be reheated. At Winnington CHP only one third of the water used is returned, the rest is consumed during TCE’s chemical production processes. To support the demand for water in its chemical production processes, TCE has a treatment plant that takes water stored in a local reservoir, that is then filtered, purified and deionized to produce water that is pharmaceutical grade purity with a pH of 7. The treatment plant is one of the largest water treatment plants in Europe to supply a power station.

Operating and Maintaining the CHP

Originally built and owned by Powergen (who became E.ON later on) in 2000, E.ON have operated and maintained the CHP on TCE’s behalf since the plant was acquired back in 2013. The plant requires three operators 24/7/365 who work closely with the chemical production plant managers to supply the required heat and electricity. They also work in tandem with the TCE Energy Team to optimize generation to respond to electricity demand from the grid, able to call on the standby gas turbine train to supply additional electricity during demand peaks.

As renewable generation sources such as wind are dependent on weather, generators such as TCE that can rapidly bring on new sources of electricity generation are becoming increasingly important to the resilience of the national grid. The CHP operates at a constant load, with steam production automatically adjusted using pressure sensors on the steam supply pipeline to indicate changing demand from the chemical production plants. Like all gas turbines, monitoring and maintenance is crucial to the long-term life of the assets. Both gas turbines have significant monitoring instrumentation that helps to predict potential failures and schedule preventative maintenance working with the OEM and specialist turbine management suppliers.

Regulatory, political & economic challenges

TCE are working hard to be at the forefront of industrial innovation, meeting government targets for decarbonisation and increasing exports.

TCE’s energy business is built on one of the UK’s largest and most efficient industrial CHP plants. It is over 80% efficient and indirectly helps to reduce wholesale energy prices for domestic customers. Supporting the regional electricity grid and other local industries via a private high voltage network already, the plant also offers more opportunity to enhance the UK’s security supply at a time when ageing generation infrastructure is being decommissioned. Changes proposed by OFGEM in, for example, its recent Targeted Charging Review published towards the end of 2019 will have a significant financial impact on generators such as TCE. Despite meeting their own energy requirements without the distribution network, industrial generators like TCE (who use their own facilities continuously) will still be charged a fixed fee to use the distribution network for supply purposes.

OFGEM’s proposed changes mean we would also lose another embedded benefit: Balancing Use of System (BSUoS) as part of TCR. That is in addition to vital revenue lost as a result of the TRIAD embedded benefit and also the Levy Exemption Certificates (LECs) changes back in 2013. These benefits were central to companies making the decision to build their own CHP. However, those days are long since gone and that’s largely down to OFGEM actions.

Many manufacturers with industrial CHP generation support clusters of other manufacturing businesses that work as an ecosystem, maintaining local economies, tens of thousands of jobs and millions of pounds of exports. The role of these manufacturers in the wider economy is ignored by OFGEM; located close to raw materials or transport hubs that have grown around them, they help to balance the UK economy away from the South East. Today, the opportunity to innovate and develop industry in the UK is under siege due to OFGEM’s relentless drive for regulatory change which takes no account of industry or the impact on energy intensive manufacturers on UK businesses that rely upon the raw materials produced as inputs to their manufacturing processes.

Serious challenges to the viability of these crucial industrial clusters are being created that risk not only the current businesses, but the opportunities such as those being created by TCE to decarbonise industry and grow exports. Specifically, as a result of changes over the past five years, TCE has lost £7m per annum due to Ofgem reforms, with a potential further £1m per annum loss as a result of the recent TCR review. This lost revenue is deeply damaging to those who operate industrial CHP plants where the cost of operation and maintenance is significant. By eroding the electricity revenue of these plants, the foundation of the manufacturing industries, the clusters and jobs they support is eroded. Ofgem can create a perfect electricity system but destroy our vital manufacturing industries in the process. Manufacturing businesses are centred where there are skills and where raw materials exist…not to take advantage of the electricity system.

To deliver the UK’s exciting vision of industrial development and decarbonisation, opportunities such as TCE’s to create a carbon capture and use plant, increase manufacturing output and export to the rest of the world must succeed, but only will if regulation and policy work in tandem, helping to ensure that efficient industries can remain sustainable.

Carbon capture and use in Cheshire

In 2019, alongside the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, TCE announced a £16.7m investment to build the UK’s largest carbon capture and utilization plant (CCU). The plant will capture 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases, equivalent to taking 22,000 vehicles off the road. Once completed, this will be the UK’s largest carbon capture plant, with the next largest at Drax power station capturing only 365 tons per year. In a unique, world first application of CCU technology, the plant will remove around 11% of the carbon dioxide emissions of the Winnington CHP and use this as a raw material for the manufacture of sodium bicarbonate.

Global demand for high grade sodium bicarbonate is increasing and the CCU plant will support TCE’s plans to grow exports of this product that already stand at 66% of production.

First published in the March 2020 issue of Energy World magazine, published by the Energy Institute, energyinst.org