© Supplied by Equinor The local council home to the Teesworks project has dropped its plans to become net zero by 2030.
A report presented to councillors last week said Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council (RCBC) had changed its plans to become net zero by 2040 instead. The authority’s corporate plan, published five years ago, named tackling climate change as its main priority.
The council says it is still aiming to reach its “ambitious” target of net zero by 2030, but that further investment is needed to achieve it. Similar to many other local councils, RCBC has had to make cuts to services in order to balance its books. For 2025/26, it made £8.8m of savings through measures including the disposal of assets.
Redcar is home to the Teesworks site, an enormous 2,500 acre regeneration project on the site of the town’s former steelworks on the banks of the river Tees. The government has recently backed Net Zero Teesside (NZT) and the Northern Endurance Partnership – a 742 MW gas-fired power station and associated carbon capture project.
NZT, a joint venture between BP and Equinor, is the flagship energy transition project at a site touted as key to the government’s ambitions to reach net zero by 2050. Other proposed projects nearby include BP’s H2Teesside blue hydrogen scheme, Energy Optimisation Solutions’ battery storage facility, and EDF’s Tees Green Hydrogen.
The EDF scheme plans to use energy generated by the Tees Wind Farm, just 1.5 km offshore Redcar town centre, to produce hydrogen.
‘Greenwashing’
In RCBC’s corporate plan from 2020, the council said around 85% of emissions from the borough came from industry, and that the council itself was responsible for 9,200 tonnes of the overall total.
For 2024/25, the council says its emissions had dropped to 5,224 tonnes.
However, the report to councillors presented by deputy leader Carrie Richardson says: “Given current financial challenges facing all local authorities, an honest assessment is required as to whether 2030 remains achievable.”
RCBC intends to align its plans to achieve net zero to those of the Tees Valley Combined Authority, the organisation led by mayor Ben Houchen of which RCBC is a constituent member.
After being accused of a U-turn, Cllr Richardson said council officers were “going as fast as they can” to put measures into place that will achieve carbon neutrality.
She added that the “challenge that was previously set was that we would be a carbon-neutral borough by 2030, rather than a carbon-neutral council.
“It’s difficult when half of the borough is setting a different date.”
Independent councillor Dr Tristan Learoyd told the meeting the council was “greenwashing”, saying it would never achieve net zero because of the number of energy-from-waste incinerators in the borough that already exist, along with plans for another at the Teesworks site.
Speaking to Energy Voice, Cllr Learoyd said: “Council officers and councillors were never serious about their climate commitments.
“The same weekend before ditching its target the council was busy greenwashing, posting on its website and social media how serious it was about the climate crisis while simultaneously supporting a 450,000 tonne incinerator.”
The proposed Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) scheme is a joint project between seven councils in the North East to burn unrecyclable waste to produce energy for the National Grid. In recent months it has seen local opposition, including from Redcar MP Anna Turley.
Energy Voice has approached RCBC about the changes to its net-zero target.
