THE largest single-site combined heat and power plant in the country is to be built at Cleveland Potash, a company based at the Boulby mine.

Thanks to this new plant the company, which has been using heavy fuel oil with gas to generate electricity, will be able to reduce its fuel bills and make a number of important environmental improvements.

For the past two years Cleveland Potash has been researching and negotiating access to Transco's local transmission system reinforcement and the implications of using it to replace heavy fuel oil.

As a result, the company has entered into a nine-year contract with Midlands-based Lattice Energy Services, which will finance, build and operate the new single-site, multi-engined combined heat and power plant.

The project is expected to be up and running early next year.

David Pybus, environment manager at Cleveland Potash, said: "Normal generation efficiencies converting fuel to electricity are about 35 per cent. With waste heat utilisation we can expect this figure to rise to 80 per cent and above.

"This is essential if the company is to be eligible for exemption from the Climate Change Levy, a recently introduced energy tax to encourage efficiency measures.

"The main environmental benefit of switching from heavy fuel oil to gas will be to halve our total carbon dioxide emissions."