By Chris Welby, Good Energy’s commercial director

The Government has announced a short list of schemes for producing power from the Severn estuary.  They have picked five of the ten schemes to go forward for further consideration, although two of the least environmental damaging are potentially in the running if they can demonstrate their effectiveness, rather than being unproven concepts.  Something the government is supporting with £500,000 hard cash. More on this in another post.

The finalists of this long, drawn out and controversial contest are:

•  Shoots Barrage - located near the Severn road crossings, estimated to cost £3.2bn to construct and generate 2.7TWh/year or just under 1% of UK electricity

•  Beachley Barrage - slightly smaller and further upstream than the Shoots Barrage (and upstream of the Wye), estimated to cost £2.3bn and generate 1.6TWh/year

•  Fleming Lagoon - an impoundment on the Welsh shore of the Estuary between Newport and the Severn road crossings, estimated to cost £4bn and generate 2.3TWh/year

•  Bridgwater Bay Lagoon - an impoundment on the English shore of the Estuary between Hinkley Point and Weston Super Mare, estimated to cost £3.8bn and generate 2.6TWh/year

•  Cardiff-Weston Barrage - located between Brean Down and Lavernock Point, estimated to cost £20.9bn and generate 16.8Twh/year or some 5% of UK electricity

There is a useful break down of each proposal and the pros and cons here, and the consultation website has a surprisingly decent amount of information on it. It’s certainly worth a read.

As a rule of thumb, the five remaining schemes follow a simple criteria, the more energy created, the greater the potential environmental damage.  I use the word potential, because quite honestly, there are so many caveats in there to make it a difficult call.

For example, one of the key concerns of environmentalists is the loss of mudflats for migratory birds.  So will the schemes affect that?  The answer is yes to a greater or lesser degree.  All the schemes will increase the amount of existing mudflats that remain permanently under water.  However, because some of the schemes will affect reduce the speed the river flows out into the sea, then the silt it is carrying may be deposited earlier creating new mudflats.  So in theory, some schemes could benefit migratory birds. 

This may all of course be academic as the report also recognises the fact that as climate change increases in intensity, migrating birds may fail to migrate to the Severn at all, or migrate further north.

There is an awful lot of work to be done before any serious conclusions can be made.  The five schemes now go forward for further analysis, to look in depth at these questions.

The over riding view I have, is that time & tide waits for no man, and this is particularly true of climate change.  Maybe by the time we’ve made up our mind, the rise in sea levels will make it all too late, as the Severn swallows vast tracks of land around it.

Please leave your comments below on what you think, and you can have your say and hopefully speed up the process here.

There will also be a stakeholder event in March in Wales so keep an eye out for more info here.

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