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 plausibility of extracting hydroelectrically-generated power from (a) the River Thames and (b) other major UK rivers.

Hydropower accounts for approximately 2% of total electricity generation in the UK. Much of this deployment is in a small run-of-river projects, which use the natural downward flow of rivers and 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 in rivers in the UK.

The viable remaining resource is less than 1GW due to economic and environmental constraints. This represents less than 1% of total generation capacity, and cannot therefore be a significant contributor to the UK's future generation plans.