Engineers including ICE president Jean Venables last week hit out at the government's study of tidal power in the Severn Estuary.
They claimed the shortlisted options lacked ambition, ignored spin off transport benefits and underestimated power generation potential.
Venables said the shortlist lacked ambition as it omitted the largest of the barrage proposals.
The shortlist is:
- The £20bn, 8.6GW Cardiff-Weston barrage
- The 1.05GW Shoots Barrage
- The 635MW Beachley Barrage
- The 1.36GW Bridgewater Bay tidal lagoon
- The 1.36GW Fleming Lagoon
Speaking at the joint ICE South West and Wales Severn Tidal Energy Conference in Bristol, Venables said the proposed £29bn Minehead to Aberthaw barrage, which would produce 25 terra Watt hours of electricity per year, should have been kept in consideration because of the substantial carbon savings it offered.
Venables added that the government should also explore the tidal power potential of other estuaries around the UK.
This would allow for structures capable of generating power from the tide at different times of day, evening out the supply of electricity from tidal power and reducing the need for other forms of power generating capacity.
Former ICE energy board chairman David Kerr also questioned the government's ambition and criticised its failure to include a barrage incorporating a rail link in its shortlist. "I'm quite disappointed that the government hasn't included a rail option for the Shoots barrage," said Kerr.
The Shoots Barrage would be built south of the Severn road crossings, and the original proposal for the scheme included the option for a rail link on top of the barrage to replace the ageing Severn rail tunnel. The government's consultation has failed to bring forward this option despite shortlisting the Shoots scheme.
"There's one tunnel underneath the Severn that's old and leaking. If you build the Shoots, it's an open and shut case that you need a railway. If you are not going to include a link straight away, at least futureproof it by allowing for a road or railway to be added later," says Kerr.
The government is in the middle of a two-year feasibility study into tidal power in the Severn Estuary.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is consulting on the shortlist of tidal power schemes following scoping studies by a consortium of consultants led by Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Deadline for responses is set at 23 April (NCE 29 January).
DECC senior policy advisor James Marsh said the government hoped to confirm the shortlist and move to the second stage of the feasibility study by June.
Irish contractor Fleming Group is promoting the Fleming tidal lagoon at Welsh Grounds on the coast between Newport and the Severn road crossings.
Speaking at the conference in Bristol Fleming Group project manager Terry Hourihan criticised the "fair basis" method used by Parsons Brinckerhoff to assess proposals vying for the shortlist.
He claimed that it underestimated the potential power generating capacity of his option.
"The fair basis assessment hasn't looked at the turbines for the lagoon as closely we feel it should have," said Hourihan.
"We would consider the fair basis result being on the low side of the energy capacity you can generate. Fair basis sets us out at 1,360MW. We believe we are at least 10% higher."
Parsons Brinckerhoff planning and environment director Peter Kydd said accepted there may be some frustration from proposers,but said the first phase of the feasibility study was only meant to capture the "essence" of schemes.
"Some options have had a lot more work and research done on them than others and we wanted to be fair, so didn't necessarily take all the available information," said Kydd.
Source: The New Civil Engineer
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