A POWER project which would add to a North East town’s role as a green energy pioneer has won international recognition for an architecture graduate.

Jonathan Flavin, who graduated with a Masters in architecture last year at Northumbria University, was runner-up in the Royal Institute of British Architects President’s Silver Medal Award which attracted almost 300 entries from 83 universities in 27 countries.

Jonathan, 30, who lives in Heaton, Newcastle, devised a scheme for a local power station in Blyth in Northumberland.

The town is already home to the National Renewable Energy Centre.

Jonathan, who works at Ryder Architecture in Newcastle, said: “Recent proposals for a new National Grid, coal-fired power station at Blyth met with public resistance.”

Instead, Jonathan’s project proposes an experimental carbon-negative “town-scale”’ power plant. It would turn local domestic waste, and locally grown energy crops, into liquid biofuels which can be used in the production of energy.

That would create a charcoal by-product, or bio-char.

This is produced through the process of pyrolysis, which is the cooking of biomass material in the absence of oxygen.

This drives off gases and oils and as there is no oxygen, carbon is not converted into carbon dioxide but remains in a solid state as charcoal.

This would serve as a fertiliser to reclaim local brownfield sites which could be used to grow more energy crops or food.

This effectively removes carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in the earth – the opposite to the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

The plant would both consume local waste and provide power for the locality. The plant, on a site at South Harbour, would be designed as a landmark building in its own right and would also accommodate university research students.

“It is a clean process which would promote a positive image of Blyth, a town now at the forefront of renewable energy technologies nationally,” said Jonathan.

The RIBA President’s Medals, presented since the 1850s, are awarded to recognise outstanding achievement in the field of architecture. Paul Jones, director of architecture at Northumbria University, described Jonathan’s entry as the cutting edge of sustainable innovation.