Decision details

i) the Assistant Director - Resources (Environment), under sub delegated powers from the Chief Finance Officer, authorised the acceptance of the grant of £129,064 from Innovate UK
ii) delegated authority to the Assistant Director – Environmental Services and Climate Change to accept the grant funding provided the grant offer letter terms are acceptable.

Authorisation to accept the grant offer letter to develop a Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plan is recommended because:
• Dalton Industrial Estate is a key carbon emitter in the region and requires a holistic plan of action to ensure cost effective decarbonisation
• North Yorkshire Council is required to coordinate the numerous businesses on site to ensure a holistic plan is developed

Alternative funding options for industrial decarbonisation plans are notably lacking and tend to be focussed on the UK’s primary industrial clusters. This project was not at a sufficient level of planning for the Devolution Deal Net Zero Fund and no other relevant funding options are known to be approaching. To not submit this funding application would leave the businesses of the site without a clear approach to decarbonisation for the foreseeable future, deeply damaging the region’s 2040 carbon negative target and their individual decarbonisation objectives.

Alternative options of focussing on individual elements of this project individually or taking a business-by-business approach would not achieve a sufficiently holistic view of net zero or the industrial site and would therefore almost certainly result in less valuable outputs which would result in poorer value for money capital works resulting from such a version of this project.