County Durham-the emerging power in the UK Green Revolution

Once the power behind the industrial revolution, our neighbour County Durham is rapidly emerging as the power behind the Green Revolution as Cllr Mark Wilkes, Portfolio Holder for Neighbourhoods and Climate Change told BBC’s Today programme on 4/3.

Speaking about the county’s impressive portfolio of green initiatives -which include a ground-breaking scheme to provide hot water from extinct mine works to over 750 new homes- Cllr Wilkes touched on recently approved plans which will site the UK’s largest lithium extraction facility in Weardale.
Located on a brownfield, former cement works at Eastgate, near Stanhope, the Weardale Lithium facility will produce battery-grade lithium carbonate from geothermal groundwaters.

Set to create hundreds of new jobs over its lifetime, the facility has potential to supply electric car manufacturers in the North-East.  Commenting on the impact of this scheme, Stewart Dickson, Weardale Lithium CEO said:
“This is a first step to really building a capability in the North-East to make a meaningful contribution to the supply of lithium, a critical raw material for our electrification future where we can now build our pilot facilities, create lithium carbonate on site, the scale up to do further testing and commercial production in the future.”

Commenting on the earlier announcement of the scheme, Professor Colin Herron of Newcastle University  said:
“We are actually going to be in the position where we can produce the lithium out of the ground, then we’ll be able to process it on Teesside, then technically we can produce the cells in Sunderland and then we can produce the cars in Sunderland.  Having all of that in a region is unique.”

We wish County Durham well in their exciting endeavours and look forward to developments with great interest.

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