Blue sky thinking

After approval was given last night to sink a £2bn mine on the North York Moors, a major plan will be unveiled this morning that could clean the air of industrial Teesside.

Plans don’t get much bigger than that.

Sirius Minerals’ bid to start the world’s biggest potash mine, which the firm reckons could lead to 1,000 jobs, has divided opinion from the day it was first aired five years ago. The scheme that claims it will increase the size of the North Yorkshire economy by 10 per cent won the day despite impassioned pleas from environmental campaigners.

Planning decisions don't get much bigger than that.

In the meantime, at events being held this week in Redcar and at Westminster, the region’s chemicals and steel producers will unveil a detailed blueprint for Europe’s first Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) network to be built on Teesside.

The idea behind CCS is that carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations, steel and chemicals plants can be captured before they enter the atmosphere and then stored underground.

Teesside Collective, a cluster of businesses including SSI, Lotte and BOC, plan to store their greenhouse gases in giant caves under the North Sea. If that sounds like a plan hatched by a James Bond villain then the reality is that this is deadly serious stuff that could help the region’s old industries to compete globally, and create new ones.

It would place Teesside at the vanguard of technology that could have a dramatic impact on industrial pollution, and develop innovations that we could sell around the world.

Today’s blueprint will seek approval, and crucially, more public funding to take the plans onto the next stage.

Critics of CCS say it is unproven and decades away from being commercially viable.

Today’s report will play a big part in attempting to create a future where the message will be that if you want to breath cleaner air then you will have to come to Teesside.

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