‘Green’ review attacks Severn power plans

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent
Published: May 8 2009 01:47

Plans for a tidal power scheme in the Severn estuary came under attack on Thursday from green groups claiming the shortlist of projects drawn up by the government was “seriously flawed”.
The accusation is based on a review of the shortlisted projects drawn up by Atkins, the engineering company, and commissioned by green groups headed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

A tidal power scheme taking advantage of the Severn’s extraordinary tidal range has been mooted since at least the 1920s. As the government has sought to find ways to fulfil its target of generating 35-40 per cent of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020, the idea has come back into favour.
Earlier this year, the government published a shortlist of five projects and started a consultation process to assess their impacts and feasibility. But the Atkins review found that the shortlist was based on out-of-date calculations, some from a study carried out 30 years ago, and criteria that the consultants said was skewed against more innovative and potentially more environmentally friendly projects.
Atkins found the shortlisting process “seriously underestimated” the amount of electricity that could be produced by more innovative and potentially less environmentally harmful projects, and underestimated the cost of some of the bigger schemes on the shortlist, such as a barrage from Cardiff to Weston.
Martin Harper, head of sustainable development at the RSPB, said: “The government doesn’t need to rush to judgement on this. If they do, there is a serious risk they will pick the wrong project. As this review shows, that could mean unnecessary damage to the environment, an oversized bill for the taxpayer and all for less electricity than is possible.”
The Department of Energy and Climate Change said all of the technically feasible schemes had been included on the shortlist, which it said had been reviewed by a panel of independent experts.
Any less developed technologies, such as tidal reefs and fences of the sort favoured by green groups, had not been ruled out, the government said, as £500,000 was to be devoted to studying them. However, they could not be shortlisted as they might be decades away from commercial deployment.
In a rebuke to the RSPB, the department added: “It’s not possible to rule out the options on the proposed Severn tidal shortlist, and simultaneously call for serious and urgent action on climate change.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009