The Independent (London), January 27, 2009 Tuesday - BRITAIN'S environmental movement was yesterday presented with its starkest choice yet: whether or not to support the world's largest ever renewable energy project which will result in unprecedented ecological damage to one of our most important natural habitats. The giant £20bn Severn barrage, which would stretch 10 miles from Lavernock Point near Cardiff to Brean Down near Weston-super-Mare, would harness the tides to generate up to 5 per cent of the UK's electricity needs - the equivalent of eight typical coal-fired power stations. This is crucially important in the fight against climate change.
The Independent (London), January 27, 2009 Tuesday - BRITAIN'S environmental movement was yesterday presented with its starkest choice yet: whether or not to support the world's largest ever renewable energy project which will result in unprecedented ecological damage to one of our most important natural habitats.
The giant £20bn Severn barrage, which would stretch 10 miles from Lavernock Point near Cardiff to Brean Down near Weston-super-Mare, would harness the tides to generate up to 5 per cent of the UK's electricity needs - the equivalent of eight typical coal-fired power stations. This is crucially important in the fight against climate change.
But environmentalists fear that by completely blocking the Severn Estuary, the barrage would destroy vast areas of mudflats and mashes, which are key feeding grounds for tens of thousands of wading birds, and prevent migratory fish such as salmon from ascending rivers to spawn. Other environmentalists think such a large project would divert resources away from other key renewable technologies such as wind power.
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Yesterday the barrage appeared on a shortlist of five renewable energy schemes for the Severn Estuary, indicating that the project, which the Government is known to favour, is moving closer to formal acceptance.
The shortlist will now be the subject of a public consultation and a final decision will be taken by 2010.
But the proposal is causing real difficulties for Britain's green movement, whose members are united in the need to take action against global warming, yet view with deep dismay the unprecedented ecological damage a Severn barrage would wreak.
The dilemma could not be more acute: on the one hand, the prospect of harnessing more renewable energy from one place than is currently produced in the entire UK; on the other, the virtual wiping out of one of Britain's most important wildlife sites.
The dilemma will only increase as the imperative of countering climate change with major developments runs up against the damage to the naural world which such large-scale schemes may cause.
The Government's official green advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) thinks the barrage should be built if it can pass two tests: that new habitats can be created for wildlife to compensate for those lost; and that the project remains in public ownership.
The Severn has the world's second highest tidal range (the difference between high and low tide can be as much as 45ft), which means that its energy-producing potential is enormous; it is capable of generating more than eight gigawatts of power. This is why the SDC is in favour of it.
"The Severn Estuary contains nearly 90 per cent of the tidal range resources of the UK, so for the Government not to consider a barrage seriously would not look like leadership over climate change," said the SDC chief executive, Andrew Lee.
However, Friends of the Earth believe that it would simply be too damaging and divert too much money that could be better spent fighting climate change in other ways.
Greenpeace agrees it has potential but thinks the Government should give priority to wind power. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Wildlife Trusts and the Government's own wildlife watchdog, Natural England, are all concerned over the impact on wildlife.
"It is hugely disappointing to see the Government still pushing forward with the environmentally destructive option of a Cardiff-Weston barrage,"
said Martin Harper, the RSPB's head of sustainable development.
"Climate change threatens an environmental catastrophe for humans and wildlife and we urgently need to find low and zero carbon alternatives to our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, so harnessing the huge tidal power of the Severn has to be right.
But it cannot be right to trash the natural environment in the process.
"The final scheme must be the one that generates as much clean energy as possible while minimising harm to the estuary and its wildlife. We know the Cardiff-Weston Barrage would destroy huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter and block the migration routes of countless fish."
Natural England's chief executive, Helen Phillips, said: "Tackling climate change requires us to make a step change in the way we think about renewable energy but we have to ensure that the decisions we make stand the test of time and do not leave a legacy of environmental destruction in their wake."
There is little doubt that a barrage would destroy more wildlife habitat than any other British construction project in modern times.
The Severn Estuary, where the celebrated naturalist Sir Peter Scott founded Slimbridge, the wildfowl refuge which became one of the world's most famous nature reserves, provides an 86,000-acre feeding ground for wild swans, geese and thousands of wading birds, such as dunlin, turnstone, oystercatcher and ringed plover, from all over Europe.
Under EU wildlife habitat laws, if the Government were to go ahead, it would have to find alternative habitat - mudflats and marshes - which might be as much as 40,000 acres and which could cost anything up to £3bn.
But that is unlikely to hold the Government back, such will be the temptation to grab that massive 5 per cent renewable energy boost that a barrage will provide, given that in December ministers took on the hefty obligation, in an EU-wide deal, of sourcing 20 per cent of total UK energy demand from renewables by 2020.
That figure (which includes heating and transport) means finding about 40 per cent of electricity from renewables - nearly 10 times the current amount of about 4.5 per cent. The Herculean size of that task means the Government is likely to go for the barrage, especially as the onshore wind industry is suffering from the rise in the euro against the pound, meaning turbines made in Germany and Denmark are now about a third more expensive than they were a year ago.
In announcing the plans yesterday, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, David Miliband, accepted that fighting climate change involved "tough choices".
He said: "Failing to act on climate change could see catastrophic effects on the environment and its wildlife but the estuary itself is a protected environment, home to vulnerable species including birds and fish.
"We need to think about how to balance the value of this unique natural environment against the long-term threat of global climate change." Apart from the main barrage, Mr Miliband announced four other shortlisted schemes: Shoots barrage further upstream which would generate around 1GW; Beachley barrage, an even smaller scheme just above the river Wye which would generate around 625MW; Bridgwater Bay lagoon, a proposal which would impound a section of the estuary on the coast from east of Hinkley Point to Weston-super-Mare and which could generate 1.36GW; and Fleming lagoon, a similar scheme which would generate the same power from a section of the Welsh shore between Newport and the Severn road crossings.
"The five schemes shortlisted are what we believe can be feasible but this doesn't mean we have lost sight of others," Mr Miliband said.
"Half a million pounds of new funding will go some way to developing technologies still in their infancy, like tidal reefs and fences. We will consider the progress of this work before any final decisions are taken."
Is it the right decision to build the barrage?
Yes
Andrew Lee, chief executive,
Sustainable Development Commission
* Climate science is telling us that we will have to reduce our carbon emissions to near zero by 2050, if the rest of the world is to have any chance to develop at all, so we must take all options for Severn tidal power very seriously indeed. In our report Turning the Tide, the SDC felt that a Cardiff-Weston barrage could be sustainable if it passed two tough tests. The first is EU law: breaching the habitats and birds directives would set a dangerous precedent. The second is the public interest - we said that any scheme must be publicly managed and owned. The barrage is a player for 2050, as are the newly emerging tidal fence and tidal reef technologies which might have less environmental impact. Ironically, a smaller scheme could also have significant environmental impact, while being too small to help much in the energy mix and hived off entirely to the private sector to boot.
No
Gordon James, director,
Friends of the Earth Cymru
* For the amount of energy produced, a Severn barrage would be too damaging to the ecological features and species of international importance in the estuary - even given that climate change and sea-level rise would be gradually affecting habitats. At a cost of around £15bn it would be uneconomic, and public funds for "climate mitigation"
projects could be better spent generating more energy in a shorter period of time from alternative renewable and or low-carbon schemes. The barrage would preclude the building of large tidal lagoon impoundments and other tidal schemes in the Severn Estuary from Bridgwater Bay eastwards, which may amount to considerable electricity and storage potential, and it would generate large amounts of electricity in two pulses of around four hours each day, which would not necessarily match high demand, and create problems for the national grid.
LEADING ARTICLE, PAGE 28
America goes green
World News, page 19
January 26, 2009
