Severn Barrage

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord German]

My Lords, I start by looking at the whole issue of the elusive trail that we have had over many decades to try to harness the power of the Severn estuary. I wish that we could call it the Bristol Channel and Severn estuary because when I was a boy we were taught that the line between Newport across to Avonmouth was the line of the Severn and that after that it became the Bristol Channel. Of course, the barrage that has been referred to is in the Bristol Channel, and we need to look at it as a whole.

The elusive trail indicates that we have had sufficient studies and need to consider what might be the best way in which to move forward. I agree with the previous Government’s report, which said that,

“the Government does not see a strategic case to bring forward a Severn tidal power scheme … The costs and risks for the taxpayer and energy consumer would be excessive compared to other low-carbon energy options”.

So the test of all this is, therefore, to find a way of harnessing this energy that meets the energy needs to which we all aspire but also provides a satisfactory solution to the environmental, economic and technical problems that are an inevitable consequence of this work. The challenge is that putting all our eggs in one basket could result in the outcome that was predicted and agreed to by the last Government, with which I agree: that we cannot do it without significant cost and economic and environmental damage.

I believe that we need to look much more widely at the whole range of energy uses—tidal stream, tidal range, wave power and offshore wind power. All those forms of power and energy are available to us; the problem is that we have only nascent technologies, which have not yet been brought to a level where they can be put into action in demonstrable projects. The whole energy sector has been dogged, for example, by the difficulty of creating appropriate turbines to deal with the rise and fall of the tide. I understand that, in the current proposal, Rolls-Royce owns the concept and patent for a nascent turbine that will work in both directions, but there is no sense that it has been developed beyond a prototype into something that could be seen to work. That is why, for example, a lagoon would allow that testing to take place, allowing that to happen and to build in an appropriate manner.

I understand that the Government have invited submissions, which is where this Hafren proposal has come from. Is there a role for Her Majesty’s Government not just to ask for submissions but to give some sense of direction and promotion to the way in which those suggestions should come? We have an urgent need for a scaled-up demonstration project. Out of that might come the world-wide excellence that we need, and expertise and technology that can be developed elsewhere. Are the Government now in a position to establish what the net economic benefit of the current Hafren proposal is to the United Kingdom? What steps do they propose to take to promote the use of alternative and multiple technologies within the Severn and the Bristol Channel so that we can begin to satisfy the need that is there?