Can the UK take the lead in renewable energy?
One region in the northeast thinks it has the answer.
I'm at the Port of Blyth in Northumberland.
This used to be the heart of British coal country.
But today it's home to some of the biggest and most exciting
green energy projects in the UK.
Pioneering advances in wind power,
a £2bn link to Norwegian renewables,
and the proposed site of a gigafactory for electric car
batteries, all within the space of a few miles.
The government is hoping projects
like these can paint the country in a green light ahead
of the COP26 Climate Change Conference in November,
while at the same time boosting its levelling-up agenda
to bring jobs and prosperity outside London.
The offshore renewable energy catapult right at the centre
of the port has come to symbolise these twin goals.
Boris Johnson himself paid a visit to its wind blade testing
facility in December last year.
Today, it's my turn to take a look around.
Hi, Tony.
Hi, Leslie.
And welcome to the world's largest blade test facility.
Let's go see it.
OK.
Let's go.
Opened in 2012, this giant complex
has tested some of the world's longest wind turbine blades,
some measuring more than 100 metres long.
So Tony, tell me what's happening here in this space.
What is going on here?
We call it accelerated life testing.
So this blade is designed for a 25-year life,
and we compress that into six months of testing.
There are two types of tests we do;
a static test, just to pull it, rather
like you bending a ruler when you're at school
and making sure that it can withstand that design strength.
And the other one is a fatigue test, where you bend it
as you bend a paper clip back and forwards,
and eventually it would snap.
This turbine, when this blade's at 12 o'clock,
it's almost equivalent in height to the Eiffel Tower.
Nowhere else in the world is capable of applying loads
at that scale.
One rotation of these giant blades
generates enough electricity to power a UK home for 24 hours.
The fact they are based on a new design
is also good for local jobs.
This blade in particular is destined for Dogger Bank
offshore wind farm.
Within probably one month of us completing the test
the owners secured the major contract to supply this blade.
And on the back of that they committed
to building a factory at Teesside,
creating 2,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Beyond testing, this government-backed centre also
provides support for research and innovation.
So far, it's helped over 800 companies
develop new wind and marine energy technologies.
And it's just part of the broader transformation
under way at the Port of Blyth.
I believe in the 1960s the Port of Blyth exported
6m tonnes of coal to Europe.
Things have moved on.
We're ideally situated because we've
got the road and rail infrastructure as well
as the port facilities.
It's almost like a perfect storm that the Blyth Valley
is set just to move forward and flagship, hopefully,
the UK in green energy.
The port still handles around 2m tonnes of cargo every year,
but not coal.
And today it's better known as a support
base for offshore energy projects in the North Sea.
I'm taking to the water to find out why.
So can you tell us about all of the different facilities
and services that are offered here at the port?
Why has Blyth become such a centre for green energy
in particular?
So a combination of things, really.
We have the expertise of the port itself.
We have a huge supply chain that plugs in
at every possible angle, from manufacturing to fabrication
to painters, welders, scaffolding companies.
So when a company has a project that they're working on,
they're able to get everything that they need on site.
This ready-made supply chain has already
helped the port secure investment
to expand their services, including
training facilities for the next generation
of offshore engineers.
Now they're looking to expand even further,
converting the site of a former coal mine
to make room for low-carbon businesses.
It's the state's clean energy terminal.
The name comes from the pit that was originally on the site.
And the great thing about that opportunity is this shift
from coal into renewables is happening in front of our eyes.
Businesses will be attracted by solar power, electric plant
and machinery running on site and a tie-in
with this offshore renewable energy
catapult to look at all sorts of technologies
to help to decarbonise the nation.
Just across the river from the Bates terminal,
Camois is home to another symbol of Northumberland's fossil fuel
past.
Built in the 1950s, Blyth Power Station
burned coal for almost half a century
before it was decommissioned in the '90s
and eventually demolished in 2003.
Largely neglected since then, the site
still has an active connection to the UK's electricity grid.
And new energy enterprises have started to move in.
That's just a great expanse of land
which has still got the infrastructure that
connects directly into the national grid.
So as far as electricity production is concerned
you've got a ready-made socket.
Basically you just need to put the plugs in.
Anywhere else, you would have to develop a new network.
The North Sea Link will go live this year,
bringing in enough electricity to power nearly 1.5m UK homes.
But that electricity isn't being generated in Camois.
It's coming from another country entirely, more than 400 miles
across the North Sea.
I'm told the roof is the best place to get a sense of how
that power gets here.
Welcome to the roof of the converter station.
You've got a fantastic view across the port,
the station, the substation.
You can see it all from up here.
Amazing.
So tell me about the North Sea Link.
What is it, and what is it doing?
So the North Sea Link is a huge underwater electricity
cable between the Port of Blyth, where we are today, and Norway.
And it allows us to move renewable energy between Norway
and the UK.
So on a day like today, where the sun's shining
and the wind's blowing, we can potentially export energy.
And when we don't have a surplus of renewables in the UK,
we can bring in hydro power that's produced in Norway.
The North Sea Link is the longest interconnector
in the world, and it took six years and cost nearly £2bn
to build.
So Norway may seem like an unlikely energy partner,
but given the type of renewable energy
each country produce they're an ideal match.
Norway has a real abundance of natural renewable
energy from hydropower.
And it's a more stable renewable than some others.
So that makes it a fantastic exporter of power
and helps each country manage the intermittency
of renewable energy.
When bad weather drives down renewable energy production
the shortfall is normally filled by fossil fuel power plants.
By providing an alternative source of clean electricity,
the North Sea Link estimates it will save 23m tonnes of CO2
emissions by 2030.
But once the cable gets here it isn't as simple as plugging it
into the mains.
The site at Camois covers half a million square feet with
state-of-the-art technology.
It's all here to convert one form
of electricity, direct current, to another,
alternating current.
Hi Nigel.
Hi, Leslie.
Welcome to Blyth Converter Site.
Let's go and have a look.
Thank you.
This is the Valve Hall.
There's four of these on site.
And this is where the magic happens.
This is where electricity from Norway
is converted to a form which we can use in our houses
in the UK.
So what are the steps in this conversion process?
Inside of here, we have thousands of small valves,
and they switch on and off 50 times a second.
And that recreates the waveform and converts it
to alternating current.
The Valve Hall is just a small part of the operation here.
But despite the acres of pristine machinery
it will take only a few onsite workers
to keep this facility ticking over.
So while the converter station may
have replaced coal for the region's energy
needs it has not been able to replace the thousands of jobs
the coal industry brought to this area.
Since the pits closed, these areas,
the coalfield communities have suffered greatly
because of unemployment.
The question is, can green jobs ever
replace what we had with the coal
industry in areas like this?
And the answer is that it can.
It'll take an awful lot of doing,
an awful lot of investment from the government.
But why should areas like this not receive the required
investment?
It's no good having this green industrial revolution here
if it doesn't mean that we're going
to change the lives of the people in these communities.
The land next door to the North Sea Link converter station
has been bought by Britishvolt, a start-up looking
to build and operate a gigafactory in what
used to be Blyth Power Station's coal yard.
The company hasn't yet secured funding for the plant
but they have big ideas for the site
and for the local community.
The factory will be here in front of us,
covering all of that 3.4m sq ft with mezzanines when
it's built. It will be the fourth largest building
in Britain.
If it comes to fruition, what would this project
mean for this local area in terms
of jobs and the local economy?
Well, the factory is in three phases,
and we think 1,000 jobs per phase
directly with Britishvolt employment.
But we want to do a lot more than that.
We would hope by the time we're finished here we don't only
have the factory with 3,000 jobs,
but we think another 5,000 potentially in supply chain
as well.
That's the ambition.
Once built, the factory would have plenty of local renewable
energy to draw on in its effort to make zero carbon batteries.
But Britishvolt is still a long way from achieving that goal.
How much more money will you need
to build a project at this scale?
It's an expensive project.
We're looking at $2.6bn as an order of cost.
We've been through already our initial funding rounds, our A
round, our B series, E is open at the moment.
We've also made an application to the UK government
for the automotive transformation fund.
We're hoping that will come through soon.
That's what that fund was set up to do.
That's what we've applied for.
Yeah.
That's what we need.
There are still big hurdles to clear before this factory can
become a reality.
But this site and the wider region around it
prove there's an appetite for a British green industrial
revolution.
Whether that happens, and whether areas
like Blyth and Camois benefit will
depend on how the government balances
its push for clean energy with its levelling-up agenda.