It is the big Government challenge, to banish dirty energy and replace it with cleaner renewable methods. But how far has the region gone towards meeting that challenge? John Dean reports.

They are the natural resources that could be worth billions of pounds to the region's industries. Harnessing energy from the wind and waves, hydrogen and the Sun has allowed the region to develop a sector that is, in some areas, leading the world.

The catalyst has been Government calls for business to play its part in reducing fossil fuel technologies in favour of greener alternatives, with ministers demanding that by 2015, the UK must produce 15 per cent of its energy using renewable means.

Sceptics say renewables can never fully replace traditional methods of generation, such as fossil fuel power stations. Nevertheless, the potential is huge.

Andrew Williamson, an advisor with regional development agency One NorthEast's business team, believes the region has plenty going for it, including companies with oil and gas production skills that can be transferred to renewables, abundant natural resources such as wind and waves, research establishments including universities, and a large chemical complex in the Tees Valley that can supply raw materials such as hydrogen.

He said: "Renewable energy is an embryonic market, but the region already has a lot of expertise in research and development. We are looking to help that sector develop and to attract investment. The North-East is in a strong position. The thing we have to do is encourage companies to set up to keep this expertise here."

One NorthEast and other business agencies are encouraging the development of specialist clusters and talking to companies that may wish to establish plants in the region to manufacture hardware for renewable technologies, such as turbine blades.

Mr Williamson said: "This is not just about Government targets, this is a business opportunity and the potential is huge. This is a global market."

Doug Everard, chief executive of the New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) in Blyth, Northumberland, believes industry must work to clean up fossil fuel technologies and reduce wastage to complement work on renewables, which he believes offer an exciting future.

He said: "We have a lot of ideas for new and renewables.

"The technologies that are well developed are wind and solar. Wave and tidal is a potentially huge resource, which will be clean and effective, but it needs time and investment.

"If that happens, within five to ten years, the technology will be available to us."

Mr Everard believes the region also needs to press ahead with technologies such as biofuel and biomass, but said greater investment was needed in the renewable sector as a whole.

He said that gas turbine technology was initially used for aircraft jet engines, which meant the gas industry could take advantage of existing huge-scale development work. Renewables have no such base.

He said: "We are making progress and are on the right lines, but it takes five to 15 years to build a power station, then it operates for 25 to 50 years. New and renewable technologies is a long-term project."

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace, said: "Government targets are ambitious, but we have to go beyond them and we are encouraged that regional bodies in the North-East are forming a coalition to work on these kind of projects."

Published: 05/10/2004