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Severn Barrage

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, on securing the debate. On behalf of the Government, I thank him very much for initiating a debate on this important subject. The expertise and local knowledge demonstrated this afternoon mean that this debate will be widely read and, one hopes, widely considered. There is a huge degree of expertise in this House on this subject, not least because two speakers were distinguished Members of Parliament— for Northavon in one case and Weston-super-Mare in the other. They had a direct constituency interest in the problems that this proposal raises. We have had expertise from others, too. The noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Miller, and many others, are acknowledged experts on the environment and the issues of this case. This is an important subject and the debate shows, if anyone ever thought that the big decisions on climate change would somehow make themselves, or would be easy decisions, how wrong they would be. There are conflicting interests all over the place. The difficulty for Government and Parliament is to work their way through these conflicting interests to try to find what is best for our generation and above all, as the noble Earl has just said, for future generations. I think it is appropriate to begin by setting today’s debate in the context of this country’s wider energy policy. The energy White Paper, published earlier this year, set out our strategy to address the two major long-term energy challenges we face. The first is tackling climate change by reducing carbon emissions, both within the UK and abroad. The second is ensuring secure, clean and affordable energy as we become increasingly dependent on imported fuel. To meet these challenges, the Government have set four long-term goals: first, to put ourselves on a path to cut our CO2 emissions by some 60 per cent by about 2050, with real and substantial progress by 2020; secondly, to maintain the reliability of energy supplies; thirdly, to promote competitive markets here and abroad, helping to raise the rate of sustainable economic growth and to improve our productivity; and, lastly, to ensure, of course, that every home is adequately and affordably heated. Achieving those goals, which are easy to set out, will require a series of changes, developments and decisions over decades to come. So we need a framework that delivers the necessary changes, and we think that that framework for action is set out in the White Paper. It is based on the principles of competitive energy markets, energy efficiency and a diverse energy mix, with more low-carbon sources of energy. In the gracious Speech on 6 November last, Her Majesty gave notice of the Government’s intention to take forward policies that will help us meet our energy challenges. Bills covering energy, planning and climate change will provide a package of measures to implement the measures in the energy White Paper, strengthening the framework for investment in low-carbon sources of energy and energy infrastructure; ensure that planning supports sustainable development and measures to tackle climate change through an efficient and fair planning process; and set legally binding emission-reduction targets, requiring government to set five-year targets. As the urgency of tackling climate change and achieving energy security increase, the case for more renewable energy has become more and more compelling. That is why the UK supports the agreement of EU leaders that, by 2020, one-fifth of all Europe's energy should come from renewables, a near threefold increase. We are completely committed to meeting our share. We do not know yet what that share will be but it is clear that, over the next decade and beyond, we will need to increase very significantly the proportion of our energy from renewable sources. The Prime Minister announced last month the launch of a consultation next year inviting a national debate about how we achieve our renewable energy targets. I venture to think that our debate today may have been the start of that national debate. I hope that our commitment to renewable energy such as wind, wave, biomass and tidal power, is clear. On Monday, as was referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform set out new proposals that could see up to 25 gigawatts of offshore wind operating in UK waters by 2020, with the potential to generate enough power for up to 25 million homes, the equivalent of all UK homes. That followed the announcement last month of consent for a 350-megawatt wood-fuelled electricity generation plant in south Wales in Port Talbot. We understand that, when completed, that will be the largest biomass plant in the world. As well as having some of the best wind resources in the world, we are blessed with some of the best tidal resources in the world too. Estimates suggest that tidal energy could provide more than 10 per cent of the UK's electricity demand. So it must make sense for us to explore the potential for harnessing that resource. That brings me to what we are discussing in detail today. Over the past year the Sustainable Development Commission has conducted a study of the potential for tidal power in the UK. It published its report on 1 October, setting out its position and advice to the Government on tidal power. I should like to make clear how grateful we are to the commission for the work it has done. The noble Lords, Lord Livsey and Lord Moran, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, were among those who referred to the commission and what it said. Its comments are subject to praise and to criticism too, but it is an important contribution to this debate. I shall come in a moment or two to some of the remarks in its conclusion. The report is wide-ranging and considers the potential for different tidal technologies, including tidal barrages, tidal lagoons and the emerging tidal stream technologies. It has stimulated much discussion and perhaps even this debate, but its position on the Severn barrage has attracted the most interest. Two of the report’s key conclusions were that, first, the commission believes that there is a strong case to be made for a sustainable Severn barrage; and, secondly, that such a development may provide an environmental opportunity by linking a compensatory habitats package to climate change adaptation. Of course, the commission set a number of conditions that would need to be met for a barrage to be considered sustainable. Those require any consideration of a barrage to be within a framework that places, "““high value on the long-term public interest and on maintaining the overall integrity of internationally recognised habitats and species””." We welcome the commission’s key message that tidal power can be generated in the Severn estuary within sustainable development principles. We are looking at the report and its conclusions with great care. The scheme with which most will be familiar and the one on which most of the discussion today has centred is known as the Cardiff-Weston barrage. It was studied in some depth during the 1980s—we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, for that information—but discussed earlier than that. The possibilities of it using what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, described as awesome natural power are clear. It is important that this scheme does not preclude other schemes, as the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, reminded us. As proposed, it would have a capacity of 8,600 megawatts and an output of 17 terawatt hours a year, providing around 5 per cent of current UK electricity demand from a renewable source and saving some 6 million tonnes of CO2 a year over its 120-year lifetime. On that basis we have to consider it seriously, just as the House has this afternoon. It has been estimated to cost around £15 million—I take on board the point made by the noble Earl in his speech from the Opposition Front Bench; it will be one of the largest civil engineering projects in the world and by far the largest single renewable energy generation scheme in the UK.