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Severn Barrage

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, for securing this important debate. He set the scene very well and listed many of the questions to which we need answers. He said that we know that the cost of the barrage will be about £15 billion, but that estimate came from the figure in the studies undertaken in the 1980s uprated by the appropriate indices. It does not include the cost of compensation measures, which may be considerable, if they are possible. The good news is that Ministers have stopped being so negative about a Severn barrage. I was asking questions about it back in January 2004. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, spoke about the Government’s prevarication on tidal power, and she is right. Today’s debate is about the barrage, but it is vital that we look at tidal stream technology as well as tidal range, including the barrage and lagoons. The SDC report looked at tidal-stream technology, which clearly has potential, but is nowhere near ready for a pilot, let alone a full-scale device in the Pentland Firth. It is fortunate that none of these technologies is mutually exclusive, but the only one ready to roll from a technological viewpoint is the barrage. There has been much talk about tidal lagoons—I received a briefing on them some time ago—but since the technology is relatively simple, I find it hard to understand why there has been no progress and none has been built, not even small-scale ones. There may be a pump-priming problem; perhaps the renewables obligation needs to be tweaked to give further incentives. Can the Minister say why progress has been so slow? Is he convinced that the costing of lagoons is hopelessly optimistic? The principal benefit of the barrage is the production of nearly 5 per cent of the UK electricity requirement with zero carbon output—its carbon output is lower than nuclear power. The SDC report indicates that the carbon pay-back period for the Severn barrage is less than 12 months. There are additional benefits of the barrage, but I do not think that they should be the major driver. It is easy to measure the benefits of a barrage and possibly to identify the disbenefits, but it is rather more difficult accurately to measure and cost the disbenefits. When it comes to wildlife and biodiversity, it becomes extremely difficult and subjective. I have no doubt that the barrage will change habitats, but global warming is doing so right now, as my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith explained. The SDC report covers ecology issues in some detail. It indicates that the birds and habitats directives need not be a showstopper, and the report is strongly against any derogation from the relevant directives. It is vital that the government study should look at this issue comprehensively and in great detail before a project consent is sought. We need to know what species will be affected, how they will be affected and whether the changes will be positive or negative, bearing in mind the observation in the STC report that an increase in the quantity of a few species is no substitute for variety or biodiversity. Once the adverse effects are understood, we need to ask whether they can be mitigated and, if not, compensated for. The noble Baronesses, Lady Young and Lady Miller, suggested that compensation was impossible—it cannot be done—and my noble friend Lord Patten said that habitat can never be replicated. They may well be right; there will be some adverse effects on species that cannot be mitigated or compensated for. At that point, we should consider the uniqueness of the species and balance that with the overriding public interest. It would be quite unwise to discard this opportunity for a Severn barrage without having studied it very carefully. My noble friend Lord Cope explained the awesome natural power of the Severn estuary. He said that we need to update the existing studies. He is right, but we also need to look at issues that we would not have looked at 20 years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has done us a great service by pointing out some of the difficulties, which are considerable. She suggested nuclear power—quite rightly, in my view—but it is a pity that the Government have made such slow progress in dealing with the problem of nuclear waste post the 1999 report of your Lordships’ Select Committee. Nuclear power is only part of the solution. What will happen if a technical fault arises in the whole fleet of nuclear power stations and they are all off the road? We know we need a mix of power sources and should not rely on one. The speech of my noble friend Lord Patten was very helpful. He touched on the difficulty of industry accepting risk, particularly risk that it is not well able to take. He mentioned the need for certainty in the appraisal and planning process. It is to be hoped that the Government will consult industry about the financial structure of the project, rather than trying to invent it themselves. I apologise for not responding to every noble Lord. Many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Cope of Berkeley, the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the issue of the ports that would be affected, in particular Bristol. No doubt there will be many effects, most of which will be negative, and these will have to be taken into account when assessing the economic case for a barrage. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, reminded us about the capacity of our port system, which is a major concern of the Freight Transport Association. Will the Minister ensure that any study will consider port enhancement and not only measure the cost of the adverse effects. On stakeholder involvement in the study, it is vital that the green NGOs, if I may describe them in that way, are closely involved in scoping the study. I am concerned that officials have been given until August to scope the study or parts thereof. Why is the scoping taking so long? This is not a case of ““Rumsfeldism””, if I may put it that way; before any decisions are made we must have all the questions answered. Certainly we cannot have any known unknowns. Some questions can easily be answered, and some will require detailed research and will take time, but taking eight months to scope the study will be very dear as it will cost about 4 million tonnes of CO2 if the project goes ahead. It is important that the project is studied from every conceivable angle. It would be disappointing in the extreme to complete the project and then discover some adverse effect that should have been anticipated but was not. I hope that the Minister will not fall into the trap of reinventing the wheel by failing to build upon the excellent work, over many years, of the Severn Tidal Power Group. This does not mean that their assumptions should not be tested—of course they should be tested. Some of their work is quite old and we now have much better analytical tools available. The STC report reminds us that the project runs the danger of diverting our attention from energy conservation—a point made by many noble Lords. Quite so, but the barrage would only be 5 per cent of the problem, and the same could be said of any renewable energy project. Finally, we can study the economics of the barrage project. We can agonise over selecting an appropriate discount rate. But we, the current generation—the current custodians—will have to pay for the project if it proceeds. However, we will definitely be leaving all sorts of problems for future generations, and they will not thank us for them. We have global warming, rising sea levels, deforestation, depletion of natural resources, loss of biodiversity on a grand scale and nuclear waste. It would be nice to leave future generations 17 terawatts of electricity every year, absolutely free.