Examination of Witnesses (Questions 38-39)
Dr Tom Shaw
31 MARCH 2008
Q38 Chairman:
Well, Dr Shaw, a very warm welcome to the Committee, thank
you very much indeed for coming. As you know, we are conducting
an inquiry into the EU's renewable energy target, with specific
reference to the UK target. We have only just begun, we hope to
publish in July to perhaps offer our views to not only the Council
of Ministers but also to the Commission and Parliament in due
time. I think it would help the Committee if you would be very
kind and just describe your own background, and perhaps help the
Committee with a description of the projects that you are both
aware of and involved with. Dr Shaw?
Dr Shaw: Thank you, My
Lord Chairman. It is certainly a privilege, of course, to have
the opportunity to make a presentation to your Committee. Water
engineering is what I call my discipline, which is civil engineering
with a bias towards water, but my career has been spent really
throughout in the hydroelectric power sector of water engineering.
By water engineering, it is often thought that it is something
to do with water supply, in my case it is only water supply to
turbines for power generation purposes. There are two scales to
this today. In the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, we have been through the
scale of generating some megawatts from hydro schemes dependent
upon dams and water storage. That era, for a number of very good
technical reasons, as well maybe as environmental too, has passed;
not totally, because Scottish and Southern Energy commissioned
a large hydro scheme in Scotland, of course, only a few weeks
ago, but nowadays the emphasis is on smaller schemes, which are
environmentally more friendly, I believe, and more easily integrated
into the network, of which there is a very large opportunity,
mainly in Scotland, also in Wales, but elsewhere as well. At the
other end of the scale there is, as you will be aware, My Lord
Chairman, a serious interest by the Government, again, not for
the first time, in the proposed tidal power barrage in the Severn
Estuary. I have been involved with that scheme for some, dare
I say, decades, since it became of interest to me in 1965. We
have played, both me personally in other guises, as well as my
small company, a role in moving that scheme towards the serious
consideration which it is now receiving. My company, Shawater,
is obviously named for reasons which I do not need to explain,
but my business is exclusively hydroelectric power generation.
That is what I do, and I hope that is what I know about, and I
do not know about much else, but I am very happy to tell your
Committee what I can about the issues that interest you.
Q39 Chairman: We know that the Department
has already commissioned or is in the process of commissioning
a further study into the Severn Barrage. Could you just describe
what a possible scheme might be and the sort of order of magnitude
of cost, and where it would be built?
Dr Shaw: Well, that, to an extent, My
Lord Chairman, is what the study is about.
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