Severn Barrage

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Cope of Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what evidence they have received about the effects of building a Severn barrage.

[Lord Cope of Berkeley]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name about the possibility of a Severn barrage as proposed by Hafren Power, which the Government are considering. Evidence given to the Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change has made it clear that it is a naive proposal, absurdly short on detail, and I am sure that it will not happen. I am glad about that, because its effects would be highly damaging. I hope that it will be strangled very soon. As long as the idea exists, it is delaying proper, careful thought about realistic ways of generating power from the colossal energy of the tides in the Severn estuary and it is also damaging investment.

When I was first in the Commons, my constituency boundary was the Severn for some 18 miles from the edge of Avonmouth to upstream of Sharpness, although boundary changes later took away the northerly six miles.

The reasons that the present proposals will not be put into practice are several and distinct. The four main ones can be summed up in the words “silt”, “habitats”, “economics” and “ports”.

The Severn is a muddy estuary. Millions of tonnes of sediment—literally 30 million tonnes at high spring tides—are washed up and down by the huge power of the tides twice a day. The question is where the sediment will settle if a barrage is built. On the scale that we are talking about, dredging is an unrealistic solution which makes no commercial sense.

There is no chance of replacing the destroyed habitats as we are required to do under the habitats directive. Salmon and other fish will not survive the turbines according to the Environment Agency and other experts during the Select Committee’s inquiry.

The economics are also crucial. Any tidal generator will produce power at highly forecastable but limited times of day and not always at the peak. However, gas, coal or biomass-fired stations, let alone nuclear ones, cannot be switched on and off as the hours of high water come and go. In any case, you have to provide enough generating capacity of other types to fill the peak while the barrage is resting.

That brings me to the effect on the ports. I am particularly concerned about the ports of Bristol and Sharpness, which I first knew as an MP. The evidence to the Select Committee from Associated British Ports concerning its ports in South Wales is similarly hostile to the proposals.

I was primarily motivated to ask for this debate by paragraph 37 in Hafren Power’s submission to the Select Committee, the only paragraph which refers to the ports. It says there will be,

“minimal inconvenience to navigation. Hafren Power intends to minimise any impact on current business at ports upstream”.

In fact the port of Bristol believes its operations would be fatally maimed by the building of the proposed barrage. Forty years ago, Bristol City Council, which owned the docks, built the new Portbury Dock to add to the existing Avonmouth Dock. Some years later, under a Labour council, it sold the whole complex to the present company. Since that sale, over £500 million more has been invested, making Bristol one of the most modern and productive ports in our country. More major investments are planned to support continued growth, but they are currently inhibited by the existence of the Hafren Power proposals.

Bristol is a big ship port. Ships come from all parts of the world with a very wide variety of cargoes. If the Hafren Power scheme were constructed, the navigable water depth at high tide would be reduced by over two metres and perhaps by three metres, depending on the silt, which I mentioned earlier. In the older Avonmouth Dock, ships over 30,000 deadweight tonnes with draughts of nine metres and above would be unable to enter. That would kill important business for the port. In the newer Portbury Dock, the effect would be similar, but it is larger and vessels with a draught of over 13 metres would be very restricted, and the existing largest vessels, currently up to 130,000 deadweight tonnes, could not enter. Of course, ships with lower draughts would be able to enter, but on many fewer days in the year. The port would be commercially unviable, and the current investment would be wasted.

The new locks to be incorporated within the barrage are another problem. They would necessarily be in the deep water channels, and the ships approaching them would be exposed to the full force of the Atlantic weather, unlike the sheltered approaches to the existing ports. There would be delays and risks attached to their operation. There would also be large costs, not only for lock operations but for dredging, pilotage, survey and towage and for the shipping companies. These costs must be paid by the barrage and guaranteed for its lifetime, but we have not been allowed to see the calculations.

Hafren Power wants a hybrid Bill, sponsored by the Government for the benefit of its consortium which would then sell it on to a sovereign wealth fund. It makes it sound simple. This part of its submission attacked my blood pressure and my funny bone simultaneously. Has it no idea of what the procedures, costs and complications of a hybrid Bill are? Let it look at the Cardiff Bay Barrage Bill proceedings and it will begin to understand the timescale and the huge costs to all parties—promoters and objectors alike—of this route. It would be a long and highly costly process, profitable only to the QCs and their colleagues involved, as well as to large armies of experts. The ports either side of the estuary and many NGOs are united against the proposal. They remain mystified by some of the claims made in Hafren Power’s submissions.

There have been numerous studies of the possibility of a barrage done over the past century and more. The latest thorough government study took several years, examined all kinds of options, and rejected the idea a couple of years ago. Other countries have considered and dismissed this as a form of power generation—for example, Canada, France, or more recently South Korea.

I recognise that this afternoon my noble friend cannot be expected to give the Government’s considered comments on all this. Apart from anything else they need to see the report of the Select Committee, which I suppose will be with us within a few weeks. But I hope the department realises that the matter needs to be settled. My concern is, as was expressed to some degree in the previous debate, that the Department of Energy and Climate Change has that insidious Whitehall disease of ditheritis—constantly talking and consulting about things and never deciding for years on end. These proposals are unworkable and damaging. It is time to decide and to say, “no”. Then we can get on with deciding how really to harness the massive tidal energy of the Severn without all the damage involved.