Severn barrage

[kshotton45]

Apparently the Severn Barrage will generate about 6% of the countrys power. This seems an ideal oppurtunity to go a little greener , but there will be a huge loss of habitat.

What do the members think ? Good or bad?

Keith.

[paulchandler6]

Surely there must be the technology around to do both, or would it be too expensive? FOE say about the creation of tidal lagoons to lessen the impact on the environment so why cant the whole area still be tidal and allow the flow to pass back and forwards thru the barrage to generate power. I admit I do not know enough about the system to give a qualified opinion.

Paul

[solus]

Disastrous, in my view!

If this scheme goes ahead, it will destroy huge areas of internationally important, and internationally protected, habitat which attracts millions of wild birds to feed and winter (as well as the visitors this brings to the area) and it will mean 'Goodbye' to the Severn Bore and the many visitors who come to watch that spectacle too.
With a £14billion outlay (which, if recent examples such as the Scottish Parliament buliding and the London Olympics are anything to go by, will become a far greater sum in reality) to generate only an estimated 5 or 6% or the country's electricity it will take quite some time to pay for itself.... I was never very good at maths but this does seem to be a very costly option...

[zharca]

hi, that 6% of energy might sound impressive, but it's only a third of the amount we are going to lose as our current old nuclear plants are closed.

All the "alternative" technologies have a very low energy density: size-for-size they really don't produce much power.

I'm very much in favour of new nuclear plants provided we use the right technology. In the past, the choice of design has been heavily influneced, first by military needs for fissile material and then by commercial ones by companies like Westinghouse.
I think there are few alternatives that can generate serious amounts of electricity: Hydro if you're lucky enough to live near Niagara or are prepared to flood a big bit of your country, biofuel if you don't mind half the world being turned into vast monoculture, the obvious coal/oil which is the cause of all our troubles, geothermal if you can wait until it stops being science fiction, or hydrogen if you don't believe in physics.

I reckon wave, tide and wind can only supply enough power if we don't actually want to turn any lights on!

[Chiltern Chris]

Barrages for hydropower basically store potential energy and then convert that energy into electrical power in a controlled way via turbines. The problem for the wildlife is that the estuary’s biodiversity is dependant on that energy being processed via physical processes in the same way year after year. The barrage fundamentally changes how the energy passes though the environment i.e. the barrage changes the erosion and deposition patterns within the estuary, changes the nutrient balances, water quality and temperature of the water, changes the amount of mudflat / saltmarsh available and the length of time both aquatic and terrestrial flora and fauna can use the various estuarine habitats and species migration is heavily compromised.

The Severn estuary, in energy terms is a reasonably natural system. The natural processes created by the energy passing through the system have created a dynamic but naturally sustaining system (ignoring Climate Change). To compensate for this we need to map and understand how the present estuary works and then replicate that elsewhere. As far as I know we don’t have the science to do this or a spare comparable estuary to use for compensation. Therefore, I’m with the RSPB on this and definitely in the ‘anti’ camp.

I think it will be nigh on impossible to compensate for this site of international importance and if you can’t compensate, then it’s not sustainable development. It’s obviously a quick fix for one sustainability target (CO2 emissions), but we mustn’t sacrifice something that’s irreplaceable when there are other more sustainable ways of meeting our targets – it’s just that they’re not as popular because it might mean taking fewer cheap flights, walking the kids to school, running only one car per household etc.

The report on the BBC this morning was quite confusing as they said that ‘environmentalists’ were split over whether a barrage should go ahead or not. They then had the ‘anti’ view from the RSPB and then a ‘pro’ view from someone they called an ‘environmental activist’. Now we all know who the RSPB are but who does the ‘environmental activist’ represent? He let it slip that he was part of SERA, which from what I can work out is basically a labour party environmental think tank. So who was this environmental activist representing? was it himself, the government, the labour party, SERA, I have no idea apart from the fact that he was obviously partisan and not saying who he was representing i.e. it could have been the government trying to covertly influence the debate by undermining the environmental argument because they know it’ll be an environmental disaster if this goes ahead. The BBC wouldn’t do an interview saying politicians are split over an issue and here are their views, without saying which politician represented which party, so why are they doing it with environmental issues?

Cheers, Chris

[kshotton45]

This from Marinet, the marine network of the Friends of the Earth.
A Tidal Barrage for the Severn estuary is again a hot issue, with Britain's need to rapidly build up renewable energy generation. Barry lies close to the landfall of the proposed mega-barrage and the local FoE group (Barry & Vale) have looked into the various options. Our preference is for tidal current turbines, but we see the debate as continuing.
The rest of the article can be found here .....
MARINET : Renewable Energy from the Sea : Tidal Power in the Severn?

It's well worth a read.

Keith.

[juliejam]

What do we feel is more important the destruction of a
valuable wildlife habitat to be able to generation just 6% of the
countries electricity..

Is this a reasonable trade off..?

Would the answer be to find even more ways of helping us conserve
more of our anergy..

Julie

[zharca]

Hi, just skimmed through it and I can see:

- a large and important part of our coastline will be lost forever
- very large tracts of South Wales get turned into quarry pits to supply the raw materials
- big redesign of the grid to take huge fluctuations of output into account

- The estimates of its output in terms of USEFUL power are pretty nonsensical, because electricity generation is controlled by the tides, not demand. So it may be generating at odd hours of the day/night with its peak output in warm weather and minimums in the winter. Because of this, it looks as if they need to build a whole lot of backup stations to take over the load.

If we must have backup stations to take the load every day when the barrage doesn't generate and they stand idle while it does, we don't need the barrage at all.

The figures have been fudged. Cost esimates at 6p-kW (2001 prices!), but selling to the National grid at 2.7p-kW, which includes .7p for "secure supply", even though it can't be turned on/off on demand. Looks as if the rest of the cost is going to be made up by us footing the bill for a big "flood barrier". At its peak output maybe 50% could be wasted because there's no way to match to peak demand.

So really: it's environmentally disastrous, it doesn't supply electricity when needed, it's very expensive per kW and it's not scalable (you can't build Severn B next to it when you want more output). Apart from that, fine.

[solus]

There is now a petition collecting signatures against the Barrage proposal on the Government's 10 Downing Street petitions site.

Petition to: Stop any plans to build a severn barrage.

[Ukwildlifeo]

The problem I have with this is that as well as destroying a lot of important tidal habitat, wont the productivity and absorbtion of CO2 into the sediment go down, possibly leaving more CO2 in the atmosphere than a power station would put out?

[nightshade]

Whatever the cost we will take the moral highground regarding Carbon saving
we will kill off wildlife left right and centre while the largest countries on the planet
do nothing, there is no justice

[zharca]

What I'm seeing with this isn't an environmentally driven project, but some fairly big interested parties who see massive, long-term construction projects and then many billions of government (our) money to support something that will never make commercial sense.

[PMG]

Absolute disaster as would the same thing be on the Ribble or Morecambe Bay, the Wash etc and for all the same reasons. Have signed the petition. I wish the government were honest about these kind of things and admit they haven't a clue about what to do for the best - basically Pandoras Box is open and things are out of control and set to get worse cos foolish people are in charge - and some of us put them there (not me - I don't vote and I'd have everyone not vote - then maybe we could have a different way of running the country . . .) Sorry can hear a rant coming on - must go away and do something else - cos this subject gets my goat . . .

Pauline

[kshotton45]

I hope it doesn't get the go ahead ( I think it's about 14 years away ). But there's a lot of money involved and wildlife so often takes a back seat to 'progress'.
With our governments record of underestimation I wonder what the final bill might be. They've estimated £14 Bn, so £200 Bn would be a fair guess!

The planned barrage would be some ten miles long, that's a hell of a lot of nature to be interfering with. Surely we can make savings of 3% on our energy needs, and draw another 3% from wave, wind, and solar power? This barrage seems like taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut. It's only going to produce power for about 5 hours a day.


Keith.