What's coming out of those chimneys? Energy‐from‐waste incineration in Teesside, UK

Once an industrial powerhouse, Teesside is positioned as a key player in the UK's Net Zero Strategy, with plans to revitalise its deindustrialised industrial clusters through decarbonisation and green energy projects. Using a series of proposed energy‐from‐waste incinerators in Teesside as a lens, I examine how the UK's green industrial strategy legitimises ongoing pollution under the guise of sustainability, enabled by regulatory frameworks that define harm within narrow, scientifically provable parameters. This limited framing fails to capture the full scope of harm, allowing chemical toxicity to disproportionately impact marginalised communities. In this piece, I advocate for epistemic justice that expands how harm is recognised beyond measurable metrics and takes seriously community knowledges of the lived and embodied experience of industrial pollution in Teesside. This approach supports the development of an affective politics of resistance that draws from a collective awareness of how environmental harm reshapes bodily capacities and subjectivities to catalyse new forms of political action.