Dad’s bid to keep lagoon plan alive
MANY supporters of the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon felt despair and anger this week when the UK government announced it would not back the £1.3bn renewable energy project.
Luke Yeates-Mayo, a 29-year-old engineer and father of two, took a different approach.
He launched a JustGiving page in a bid to keep the project alive.
Mr Yeates-Mayo, who lives near Newport’s Celtic Manor, doesn’t pretend that donations could pay for the epic engineering project. But he would love to see people given the opportunity to individually invest in a lagoon he believes has the proposal to change the world.
He said: “I first really came into contact with the idea of the lagoon when I was at university. I studied at the University of South Wales, which is located right by the Severn as it goes past Newport.”
He watched it rise and fall every day and wondered why its power wasn’t being harnessed. Then he heard about the ideas for a lagoon and thought, “this is fantastic”.
It is not just the possibility of making a technological breakthrough that excites the young engineer. He argues the lagoon would be good for the Wales in which his family is growing up.
He said: “I’ve got two young children... My children are Welsh and my wife’s Welsh; I’m thinking about their future...
“If I could invest [in] sustainable energy, absolutely, I’d invest in it and I know hundreds of like-minded people who would do that.”
Suspension bridge technology jumped forward in 1826 with the opening of Thomas Telford’s crossing over the Menai Strait.
Mr Yeates-Mayo, who is married to Lauren and is dad to Spencer, seven, and Mimi, five, wants 21st-century Wales to show the world how tidal energy can be captured.
He said: “For me, it is a massive project that would really show that Wales in particular is willing to do something that nobody else is doing.”
Describing the lagoon’s significance, he said: “There are great projects out there but nothing like the tidal lagoon has come around in a long time.”
He added: “Anyone dreams of working on a project that’s groundbreaking, don’t they? Something that changed the course of history – that’s their dream as an engineer.
“Anything you do in life, you want to make a change, particularly if you have family and young children; you want them to look up to you and go, ‘My family member changed something, made a difference.’”
When he heard the project had not received UK government backing he felt “disbelief”, but he says the question is now: “How can the people, how can the public help push this forward?”
Meanwhile, former Wales Office special adviser Lauren McEvatt has criticised the UK government’s decision.
Writing for the Times, she said: “I believe the tidal lagoon decision allows the UK Government to be criticised for not caring about investment in south Wales.”