‘Japan and the US could steal a march on Wales in tidal race’
As the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon plan founders, Political editor David Williamson speaks to an expert at the city’s university who fears that other countries will now cash in where Wales has been forced into failure
ALEADING Welsh engineering expert has highlighted the risk that other countries will steal a march on the UK in the race to harness tidal energy following the Westminster Government’s decision this week not to back the proposed lagoon.
Dominic Reeve, Professor of Coastal Engineering at Swansea University and head of its Energy and Environment Research Group, said this was a “potential danger”.
He noted that while Wales had “probably the best” tidal range in Europe for lagoons, there are “places in the States and Japan [where] there are larger tidal ranges”.
The professor would like to see the Swansea project rebooted so that “power on our doorstep” can be harnessed.
He also stresses the potential of “tidal stream” technology, which uses devices that look like underwater windmills to take “energy from the motion of the tide and the currents”.
He said: “At the moment, technology is such that you need very fast tides to do that. In Wales, there is one place, in Ramsey Sound [in Pembrokeshire], where research is progressing on that, and there are other groups overseas that are looking into the same sort of technology.”
Describing the disappointment at the UK government’s decision, he said: “There’s no doubt it’s been a bit of a blow, to put it mildly... From our point of view it’s unfortunate because of the research leadership we’ve been building up in this field.
“Had the lagoon gone ahead, then it would have been fantastic for our civil engineering students to have this on their doorstep...
“Not everybody was for it but in terms of a reliable alternative [tidal] has a lot going for it because it is predictable. Tides are much more predictable than sunshine in Wales.”
A key area of research had been the potential damage to the environment and the team has deployed wave tanks and laser scanning.
He noted: “If you build anything on the coast you usually see either scour or accretion occurring.”
But the setback for the lagoon will not mean the end of the research, and he argues that just as the cost of wind power has fallen as the technology was rolled out and engineering improvements were made, the same could happen with tidal.
Prof Reeve, whose research group is part of the Zienciewicz Centre for Computational Engineering in the College of Engineering, was frank about the obstacles the lagoon project has faced.
He said: “There is no doubt that the technical expertise exists in terms of the engineering know-how to construct a lagoon or a barrage. [I] think the UK has one of the most stringent planning processes in the world – some would say rightly, some would say wrongly – but it does mean any large project is subject to scrutiny and really quite a long process.”
The Swansea lagoon was given a thumbs-up by an independent review in January last year but it was not until this week that the UK government confirmed it would not back the project.
Prof Reeve said: “It’s not just the technical aspects or even the financial aspects that come into play. I think also that timing was against this in this case because a small thing called Brexit occurred.
“The politicians of course are thinking more about that than renewable energy.”
Stressing the potential of the technology, he said: “It would be nice to see something happening. It would be very helpful to have some diversity in the alternative power sources that we are going to rely on.”