Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
Dr Tom Shaw
31 MARCH 2008
Q40 Chairman: Of course.
Dr Shaw: Shall we say, we all have views
as to where it might or indeed in some cases might not be. An
alignment for the barrage, which has been now favoured for some
decades, is just seaward of Cardiff to just seaward of Weston-super-Mare
on the Somerset coast; in other words, seaward of those two locations.
How far seaward is, of course, for debate, and there is also,
of course, a school of thought that says it should be landward
further up the Severn Estuary, to, one might say, lesser effect
from the point of view of power generation. The issue of energy—I
will not say it frightens me, but I am daunted, this I know is
one of the purposes of your Committee, I am daunted by the fact
that at the moment, in the UK, we generate, as you will be well
aware, just 1% of our total energy—energy, not electricity—from
renewable sources. The Severn Barrage, for example, would double
that. All of the hydro which was built in those earlier decades
and all of the wind power that we have now come to depend upon
over the past decade would produce roughly 1% of our energy. The
Severn Barrage is equivalent to that much. At a stroke—I
often say it only requires one planning application to double
it. But that is 2%, and the EU, as you are aware, is looking to
generate 20% by 2020. Even with the barrage, that is still a twenty
fold increase on where we are at the moment. It is a daunting
prospect.
Q41 Chairman: Could I just clarify
that, because the understanding of the Committee was that the
UK's target would be 15%.
Dr Shaw: 15%, yes.
Q42 Chairman: Even so, that is a
very significant increase?
Dr Shaw: Why there is a distinction between
the earlier figure of 15% from the UK Government and 20% in January
of this year from Brussels I do not know, but those two figures
are on the table.
Q43 Chairman: Could you just say
a word about what you describe as smaller schemes in Scotland?
Dr Shaw: Well, they are smaller; bordering
on insignificant in national terms because if you have 100 or
1,000 of them, you would see a difference, but when one Severn
Barrage, with a generating capacity of nearly 10 million kW, makes
only a 1% difference to our total energy consumption, you would,
My Lord Chairman, require an awful lot of smaller schemes, whether
they be hydro schemes or wind farms, to achieve a significant
change in generating capacity. Hence my comment that I find it
somewhat daunting—not impossible, but daunting.
Chairman: I am going to ask colleagues
now to join me. Lord Paul?
Q44 Lord Paul: I am less than impressed
with what you say about these smaller schemes, but what kind of
a cost difference comes between a big scheme and a small scheme,
because the general impression is that they are not cost-effective
at all. You can impress people with a lot of these schemes, but
it does not solve your problem.
Dr Shaw: We tend, Lord Paul, to use the
ratio of pounds per kilowatt of generating capacity as an indicator
of viability, and £1,000 per kilowatt, in today's renewable
obligations business, will give a very viable project. The Severn
Barrage, the latest figures that are referred to, would give about
£1,500 per kilowatt as the unit cost. Hydro schemes that
we are involved with, many, many of them, tens of them in Scotland,
in fact, I am pleased to be able to say, work out slightly cheaper
than that, around about £1,000 a kilowatt, and that is a
very good proposition. I was interested to see only in this morning's
Financial Times that there is up for sale a large tranche of wind
power generating capacity which, if the figures in the FT are
correct, and I do not know whether they are or not, are up for
sale at over £3,000 per kilowatt. So a Severn Barrage at
£1,500 per kilowatt appears to make sense.
Q45 Lord Paul: That is fine, but
the question of transmission, the costs are basically the same
whether you have a smaller unit or a bigger unit, so how do you
spread over the delivery to the consumer?
Dr Shaw: It is not maybe surprising,
Lord Paul, that much of the community in this and other countries
does not live where renewable energy is most intense, and it is
only where people live in large numbers that we have such services
as grid transmission facilities. If we look to the UK, to the
north-west of Scotland, for wind power as well as sea wave energy
resources, we do not find indigenous at the moment transmission
capacity. If we look to the Severn Estuary as it happens, in contrast
to what I have just said about people living near high energy
locations, people do live close to the Severn Estuary, where the
tides are, I stress, to my knowledge, the third highest in the
world. They are often said to be the second, but they are not.
But people do live there in large numbers, and the transmission
infrastructure around the Severn Estuary, and for some distance,
of course, away from the Severn Estuary, is relatively strong.
So I am not dismissing transmission as an issue, but in the investigation
that was carried out into the Severn Barrage in the 1980s, where
one of the partners was the Central Electricity Generating Board,
transmission was not raised as a serious concern from the Severn
Barrage, not in the way it is being raised now for wind power
in Scotland.
Q46 Chairman: Could you just estimate
for us order of magnitude—I appreciate that the Department
now has consultants or is likely to appoint consultants to estimate
the cost, but what sort of capital cost are we talking about for
the Severn Barrage, order of magnitude?
Dr Shaw: The figures that were quoted,
My Lord Chairman, they started off with a comprehensive investigation,
and here, I have to say, it is the only comprehensive investigation
that so far has to my knowledge been carried out in the late 1980s,
the same as I have just referred to in the context of the CEGB,
put a cost of £8 billion to the barrage, and all that has
happened since then is inflation escalators have been used to
reach an oft-quoted now figure of £15 billion, and the scheme
has never been put out to public tender. I hope that will come,
but even at £15 billion, at 10,000 MW nearly, £1,500
per kilowatt is a competitive price for the product.
Q47 Chairman: Again, to construct
a barrage from seaward of Cardiff and Weston-super-Mare, order
of magnitude of capital cost?
Dr Shaw: £15 billion.
Q48 Chairman: And length of time?
Dr Shaw: There is an interesting answer
to that, My Lord Chairman. It is estimated that the time it would
take would be about nine years to build, but from an early stage,
like with any power station, you have the capacity to do something,
to generate something, and by the time the nine years are up,
because turbines are being installed over much of that period,
and can be used from the end of year five, by the end of year
nine, about three years' worth of full generation will have been
achieved. So the answer to your question, in a sense, is six years,
although I suppose technically it is nine years, but the importance
of being able to generate pre full commissioning is, I think,
extremely important in economic terms.
Q49 Lord Ryder of Wensum: Do those
figures take account of delays from planning or other inquiries?
Dr Shaw: I do not know how one does that,
my Lord. No, they do not. If you have a formula, I am sure that
many people would be pleased to know.
Q50 Lord Ryder of Wensum: I can only
offer a formula that we endured over Sizewell, and a great deal
of that came from environmental interests, and I have no doubt
that any inquiries over this notion would take as long, if not
longer, bearing in mind the lessons that people have learned from
the extensive amount of time that they were able to prolong the
Sizewell inquiry for.
Dr Shaw: If I may, My Lord Chairman,
the Government's stated aim now is to build on what has been done
already, which is considerable, with a view to reaching a position
on a barrage by 2010, and then to carry out detailed investigations
of that preferred project for a further four years, with this
issue foremost in mind, and the building programme then would
be from 2014, ie the other side of the Olympics, which is, I think,
significant from the constructional point of view, for six or
seven years. Now I am not answering your question, forgive me,
as to whether or not there will still be objections beyond 2014,
but that is the stated aim.
Q51 Lord Walpole: Yes, I want to
know, what do you physically think is going to be built to achieve
this? I know the highest tides in the world, which I believe are
the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia, and I have seen them coming in
and out, and they are fantastic. You are only about seven feet
less than that, are you not?
Dr Shaw: Yes.
Q52 Lord Walpole: But do you put
a dam across the whole thing, 40 feet high, or do you put individual
tide mills in relevant places, or are there options of doing different
things? Are we going to end up with a dam right the way across?
Dr Shaw: That is the intention of a barrage.
The definition of a barrage, as I understand it, is that it has
water on both sides, as against a dam, which does not; that is
the technical difference.
Q53 Lord Walpole: Is that necessary?
Dr Shaw: Yes, but the difference in energy
potential between a current and actually generating a difference
in level across a structure, in energy terms, is huge. Pressure
is really what hydroelectric power is all about. If you do not
have pressure, you have got windmills, and windmills, to be viable,
are big, because they have to capture area or flow, whereas if
you have pressure, under the pressure you can pass that flow through
a smaller area. So pressure is really what a barrage or a dam
is all about. Otherwise you are left with, as you say, tide mills.
That is a very different order of proposition from the point of
view of the energy realised from the same line across the barrage.
If you only had devices capturing the current, you would be left
with less than 10% of the energy potential of actually having
a barrage.
Q54 Lord Walpole: But if for a second
we talk about microgeneration, are tide mills using the flow any
good at all?
Dr Shaw: Oh yes. In the UK alone, in
the 11th and 12th centuries, there were thousands of them, extraordinary,
that is the information I have, and still a few survive from that
time, but yes, of course, they will make a contribution. Microgeneration
will make a contribution; I think in national terms, it is really
very small. I am not saying it is insignificant at all, but in
an estuary with a tide range of the strength and height of the
Severn, I think that would not be where you would put your tide
mills. There are many others, like the Pentland Firth around the
top of Scotland, Orkney, where the current is strong but the tide
range is small, which are well suited to watermills. So you go
with those where you have the current, but where you have the
range, then I think you go with a barrage for most economic effect.
Q55 Lord Walpole: Basically, there
is nowhere else in this country that is probably worth doing it?
Dr Shaw: Solway Firth would be second.
The tide comes in along the south coast of Ireland and the north-west
facing coast of Cornwall, and is focused into both the Bristol
Channel and Severn Estuary, and up the Irish Sea. That is the
area, for simply topographical reasons, geographical reasons,
with the highest tides in the UK, so to an extent, anywhere in
the Irish Sea, or south of the Irish Sea in the Bristol Channel,
there is the potential for barrages. I think I am right in saying
that Solway Firth would have the second highest energy opportunity,
power-generating opportunity of the UK, with the Mersey and that
part of the Dee Estuary next. Those are West Coast opportunities.
On the East Coast, there has been talk of an Outer Thames Barrier,
installing turbines for power generation, and of course that could
be done, but the tide range is relatively modest, and so the economics
would be relatively less attractive.
Q56 Lord Walpole: That does answer
the other thought that I have about the Thames, as to whether
one could do anything. The sheer amount of water that goes down
there is very great, but it does not have the potential to run
turbines.
Dr Shaw: The range is vital.
Q57 Lord Whitty: I am agnostic on
the Severn Estuary, but I have heard a lot of arguments against,
which suggest that in addition to the £15 billion capital
costs, there are significant environmental costs, and also some
economic costs in relation to the ports in the Bristol Channel
and so forth. Let us say that takes the cost up to an equivalent
of £20 billion or so. If we are getting 1.5% final energy
use from a Severn Barrage, can you conceive of any other way in
which that £20 billion could be spent to achieve a similar
(a) contribution towards the renewables target, and (b), rather
more important, a contribution towards carbon reduction?
Dr Shaw: Of course, if we are going to
meet the 20% target or even the UK's 15% target, the Severn Barrage
is a relatively small element in the total, so there must be many
other ways of achieving the bulk of what is being sought. In terms
of value for money, at £1,500 per kilowatt or thereabouts,
the Severn Barrage must be a good proposition, must be a contender.
Yes, I too am well aware of environmental arguments, which I disagree
with, but that is a different matter, against the Severn Barrage,
but that, I think, My Lord Chairman, is the purpose of the Government's
current investigation, to say: what is the substance behind these
notions of environmental disadvantage? I am very much sympathetic
with asking the question because I am not sure that I necessarily
accept what is said. In terms of answering the question, other
means of generating at the moment large amounts of energy, there
is only one other means that I am aware of of generating large
amounts of energy, and that is wind power. On the timescale of
this side of 2020, there are only two sources, it is either tides
in the form of barrages or it is wind. All the other technologies
which are being developed, and one is delighted to see them developed,
have, I think it is commonly said, something like a 25-year commercialisation
period between proving the technology and actually having them
at a large enough scale to make a meaningful contribution to our
national requirements. 25 years takes us far beyond 2020, of course.
So I think there are only really two source areas: the tides,
in the form of hydropower, and wind.
Q58 Chairman: Just before turning
to Lord Rowe-Beddoe, could you just clarify the calculation of
the £1,500? Does that include capital amortisation?
Dr Shaw: Yes.
Q59 Lord Rowe-Beddoe: Dr Shaw, can
I just pick up on from one question Lord Whitty asked you about
the Bristol ports, could you tell us what the position is there?
Because we have all heard grumblings or noises. As you live in
that part of the world, I assume that you are aware of it.
Dr Shaw: Yes, the Bristol ports certainly
have a concern of access by not just the vessels that use the
port at the moment—and I think the same would go for Newport
and indeed to a lesser extent nowadays for Cardiff, because the
barrage would be seaward of all of them, and Sharpness, and thence
Gloucester. So there is a requirement, and this was recognised
I think fairly adequately in the earlier 1989 investigation I
referred to, Government and CEGB, and the Severn Tidal Power Group,
by the inclusion of two locks of a significant size in the barrage.
In the meantime, ships, of course, have grown only one way, larger,
and the Bristol ports are looking to complement their existing
facilities by constructing, for larger ships, a larger facility
to accommodate larger ships than they have at the present time,
to complement the general world trend in shipping. So the barrage
would need, on that basis, to include even larger locks than were
advocated in the 1980s, and the Bristol ports are, of course,
concerned that their commercial position could be prejudiced by
the thought that there are barrage investigations going on which
might not recommend or conclude that such locks should be included.
So I think there is an understandable commercial concern by the
Bristol Port Company that their business or the expansion of their
business is in some way under threat. If I am allowed a view,
My Lord Chairman, my own view is that here is an opportunity to
consider the possibility of the UK having a facility such as the
Dutch are building at Maasvlakte 2 and Dubai ports are building
at Jebel Ali, to build a port of truly national substance where
it needs to be, out there facing the Atlantic, which is after
all where the ships come from, wherever they come from, on the
seaward side of the barrage. But that is a notion of mine, it
is not welcomed by the Bristol Port Company as you can imagine,
but it would seem to me to be a situation which, on the timescale
of the barrage, which is post 2020, ought to be given serious
consideration.
|
