A visit to Lynemouth Power Station
On Friday 14th April Councillors Tom Roll, Louise Spratt (Chairman), Alison Sutherland and Gwen Woodman, accompanied by the Elaine Brown (Town Clerk) visited Lynemouth Power Station to learn more about the operations of Lynemouth Power Ltd and the plans they have for the future.
Despite being named after our neighbouring parish, Lynemouth Power Station sits within the boundary of the Newbiggin by the Sea parish and is one of the largest employers in our area.
Lynemouth Power Station is owned by parent company, EPH, a Czech-based organisation that has become one of the worlds leading operators with more than 20 global power plants. We were welcomed by Paul Harriman (Generation Director), Jonathan Scott (Commercial & Fuel Director) and Tom Wright (Financial Director) who provided an overview of the structure and operations of the world class fuel handling facility and their ambitions and aspiration’s for the future.
Lynemouth Power LTD recently shared the following news (copied from LPL Media) :
Lynemouth Power Limited (LPL) welcomes the UK Government’s reaffirmed commitment to deploy Power BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage) projects by 2030 in yesterday’s Powering Up Britain strategy and related Track-1 Phase 2 announcements.
We particularly welcome confirmation that LPL’s application from October 2022 has passed the assessment based on deliverability for the Power BECCS project submission process.
LPL is encouraged that, having been successful in passing the deliverability assessment for its Power BECCS submission, we have been invited to enter formal bilateral discussions with the Government which we have accepted. LPL remains committed to ensuring that the Government is able to achieve its stated 5Mtpa of engineered Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGRs) by 2030.
Lynemouth Power Limited Commercial & Fuel Director, Jonathan Scott added:
“We welcome confirmation from Government that the Power BECCS project at LPL has passed the deliverability criteria. This is just reward for the efforts of our team at Lynemouth and within our wider group and project team. We firmly believe that BECCS at Lynemouth Power Station holds the key to decarbonising the North East of England, supporting the UK in its ambition path to Net Zero. Not only will LPL facilitate negative emissions to offset the hard to abate sectors, but it will secure and create hundreds of skilled jobs in the area and help ensure energy security for years to come.
We have already accepted the invitation from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to engage in formal dialogue and welcome including the results of the consultation on the BECCS business models as well as discussing how we work together to transition the site to provide the UK with millions of tonnes of negative emissions.“
This is an exciting opportunity for both LPL and the North East.
Cllr Louise Spratt commented “I would like thank Tom, Jonathan and Paul from LPL for meeting with the Town Council and explaining what the future plans are for the power station. I welcomed the aspirations the company have to keep the residents of Newbiggin by the Sea already employed with them busy for quite a while. When discussing what opportunities there could be for our younger residents, it was also encouraging to hear of the apprenticeship scheme that is already in place an the potential opportunities to link up with local school careers advisors.
Climate change was one of the topics discussed and an invitation was extended for a representative from LPL to join the new Newbiggin Climate Action working group. We hope they can attend and work alongside the Town Council and residents to create a cleaner, greener Newbiggin.”
