Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of increasing the use of existing weirs to generate renewable energy.

Hydropower accounts for approximately 2% of total electricity generation in the UK. Most current deployment is in a small run of river projects which tend to be relatively expensive.

Studies in Scotland, England and Wales indicate that there is a maximum remaining technical potential of around 1.5GW for small-scale hydro, including existing weirs.

Economic and environmental constraints mean that in practice the viable remaining resource is less than 1GW, which represents less than 1% of total generation capacity, so is not a significant contributor to the Government's future generation plans