The Teesworks freeport is a clear win for the North East

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• Green campaigners should realise that profit is not a dirty word
• Local people know the freeport is a winner and will create scores of new jobs
• If we want a green revolution, the private sector has to be on board

For many on the Right, the transition to net zero is a waste of time. A silly project that spun out of control, taking up political oxygen where more useful things might otherwise have been discussed. For many on the Left, the move to green energy can only be achieved by nationalising industry and a move to full blown socialism.

A trip to Teesworks, near Redcar, convinced me that neither of these theories are correct. I went to Redcar as part of a large research project undertaken for the Jobs Foundation, a charity dedicated to jobs as the best route out of poverty, and business as a societal good. It has involved travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain, speaking to hundreds of business owners and community leaders about how to create the 2 million jobs we require to move almost everyone in the country out of poverty.

In all my travels, Teesworks was perhaps the most impressive thing I discovered. It is a massive (4,500 acre) site, where the old steelworks was located, before they shut down permanently in 2015. In its place, one of the largest green energy hubs in the world is now being built.

It has already brought hundreds of jobs back to the area and will create tens of thousands of new jobs by the time it is complete. Despite this, there has been some controversy around Teesworks. The land was in public hands until it was bought for GBP15m by a private company, Teesworks Ltd, with the stipulation being that 10% of the profits made on the site would come back to the public purse in perpetuity.

This seems like a good deal all round: a site that was going to sit there for who knows how long is instead being developed, not only into something that will create jobs and wealth in the region, but will also be a huge creator of clean energy. In addition, it will be a constant source of public funding for the area, with large amounts of the money received from their share of the company being put into regeneration. So why the controversy?

The problem for some appears to be centred around Teesworks being a private, profit-making enterprise instead of a public body. You have a local council that is largely Labour run, up against the Tory Teeside mayor, Ben Houchen, someone who has staked a lot personally on Teesworks being a success. Houchen won re-election as mayor this year, and Teesworks had a lot to do with that.

Most people in the area know it’s a winner and will create scores of local jobs. To those who decry it being in private hands, I would say the following: one, it almost certainly took the innovation you can only get in the private sector to unleash the value of what Teesworks has in store. Two, if you want the green energy revolution to happen, people in the private sector are going to have to see the profit in it.

That’s its only genuine chance of success. The people running Teesworks becoming wealthy from it should be something for environmentalists to cheer on, not scorn. It means the transition to clean energy is doable.

The site itself is incredible. Among the massive warehouses and work buildings being created (many the size of several football pitches), there is also a man-made quay along the riverbank. The mouth of the Tees was too rough for large boats to come in and out of the site, so they built a massive quay in 18 months from scratch.

‘We had the likes of Balfour Beatty, other multinationals saying, “Okay, we’ll come back in 18 months and if you’ve built the quay, then we’ll talk”‘, Martin Corney, one of the directors of Tessworks, told me when he took me on the site tour. ‘And when they returned a year and a half to find the brand-new quay sitting there, they understood that we meant business’. Teesworks couldn’t have happened without government help – getting the thing started required local political support. Yet it also would never be what it will become without the private sector doing most of the work.

Public-private cooperation in creating jobs and industry can be incredibly powerful when they combine properly. I’ve never seen a more substantive, real-world example of that than what I saw with my own eyes at Teesworks. The development of a dead site to create not only tens of thousands of jobs in an area that desperately needs them, but a massive amount of green energy should be celebrated by everyone.

It is win-win all round. Green campaigners should realise that profit is not a dirty word – rather, it is the thing required to make the transition they desire become reality.

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Nick Tyrone is Senior Policy Advisor at the Jobs Foundation.

Columns are the author’s own opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of CapX.