Net Zero Teesside contractors launch skills drive as North East NEET rate hits 20.4%
The education push at the East Coast Cluster's gas-with-CCS plant comes as North East youth unemployment grows at four times the national pace.
The primary contractor behind Net Zero Teesside Power launched an education initiative on Monday (2026-09-21), targeting youth unemployment in a region where 20.4% of 16- to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training. Colleges in the surrounding area, including Hartlepool and Darlington College, have joined as construction ramps up at the NZT Power site.8
That NEET rate has risen 5.9 percentage points across the North East of England over the last five years, against a national average increase of 1.5 percentage points over the same period, according to the regional combined authority's evidence hub. The gap is widening in a region that carries more than its share of heavy industrial transition risk.8
NZT Power is a core emitter in the East Coast Cluster, awarded a share of £21.7 billion in the UK government's flagship Track 1 carbon capture cluster programme. Its construction workforce is not just a local employment question — it is the delivery mechanism for one of the largest energy infrastructure commitments Britain has made.8
The plant runs on gas, which anchors its commercial logic directly to European benchmark prices. On Monday (2026-09-21), ICE Endex TTF front-month held at €79.54/MWh, with NBP quarter-ahead at €81.35/MWh. The dominant source of British gas supply is Norway, which provisional figures suggest provided nearly 70% of UK gas imports in 2025, according to The Economist.1
Norwegian output has not been steady. Production fell for four consecutive months through April 2026, when gas output reached 339.2 million cubic metres per day, down month-on-month and year-on-year, with sales gas at 10.2 billion cubic metres — 0.7 billion cubic metres below March — according to preliminary official figures from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate.2
June brought a sharp recovery. Gas output reached 332.8 million cubic metres per day, up 9.3% from May and 13.4% above June 2025, according to government figures published Tuesday (2026-07-21). Crude production also beat official forecasts, averaging 1.827 million barrels per day in June before falling back to 1.776 million barrels per day in July.4,5,7
Norway was the European Union's top pipeline gas source in 2025, accounting for 86 billion cubic metres, or roughly 54% of EU supply, according to the European Commission's latest gas market report. Any extended outage, labour action, or seasonal curtailment in Norway passes through directly into the economics of gas-fired generation in Britain.4
Norwegian hydro adds a secondary constraint. Regulator NVE urged hydropower producers on Wednesday (2026-08-05) to prioritise supply security after reservoir levels in parts of the country fell to a 20-year low, Montel reported. Norway day-ahead power was priced at €52.24/MWh on Monday (2026-09-21), partly reflecting tighter domestic conditions.6
The Humber region, immediately south of Teesside, has pursued a comparable workforce effort: 13,000 students have engaged with the Humber Marine Renewables young ambassador programme at a time when UK entry-level hiring rates have fallen 14% annually, according to Energy Voice from July (2026-07-16). The North East faces a more acute version of the same constraint, with a youth joblessness measure growing at roughly four times the national pace.3,8
With £21.7 billion committed to the East Coast Cluster and Norwegian gas output having swung from four consecutive months of decline to a near-10% monthly rebound in June, the rate at which NZT Power can build out a trained local workforce in coming quarters sets the construction clock for the broader cluster programme.8,2,4