EQTEC to drop its 25MW Teesside project 

In the UK, EQTEC plans to cease activity on its Billingham project at Haverton Hill, Teesside, UK. The decision comes amidst increasingly challenging market conditions in the UK and following recent setbacks with the project that make it unfeasible for the company to prioritize against its broader strategic opportunities.

The project was one of the company’s most ambitious to date, aiming to create a refuse-derived fuel-to-combined heat and power facility that would transform 200,000 metric tons per year of RDF into up to 25MW of electricity for export to the national grid, with the potential for creating up to 34MW of thermal energy. The company had secured all relevant permits and permissions to build the plant, agreed favorable heads of terms for over 250 percent of its required volume of feedstock and was pursuing discussions with neighboring companies about provision of private wire offtake.

Finalizing private wire offtake terms was as an essential final step in making the project attractive for investors seeking larger-scale investment opportunities, and EQTEC had been in discussion with candidate offtakers toward formal agreements. However, those candidate offtakers’ recent announcements of their intentions to close their own Teesside operations created a significant setback for the Company in its efforts to finalize the investment case for the project. Notably, nearby industrial companies announcing closures of Teesside operations cited increasing costs of doing business in the UK and the consequent challenges of remaining competitive as the rationale for their decisions. The Company has experienced similar challenges and is not in a position to fund further, expensive work on development of the Project.

At the same time, and due to unprecedented demand for grid connectivity near the Haverton Hill site, Northern Powergrid Holdings Company has informed the company that it has terminated its grid connection contract with Billingham EFW Limited, which owns the land on which the plant was to be built. Given that the project is overdue on its milestone to commence construction, NPg informed the company that it was under political pressure to cancel the contract given strong demand for connections from new energy projects and aggressive development around the specific grid connection point relevant to the project.