Member News
By Lord Renton of Mount Harry - 22nd November 2011
Lord Renton of Mount Harry advocates pushing forward with tidal power, emphasising its benefits over wind and nuclear.
I am no scientist but I live a few miles from Newhaven and can, on a sunny summer day, see the coast of France. Naturally, I wonder why the French at St Malo built the world's first tidal power station, and now the largest, in 1966 whilst we, despite being an island with a large number of tidal beaches, have taken so long to get involved in tidal power. I suspect that the problem was that we became too optimistic about wind power, which is variable and not predictable in either time or strength.
Now we are taking tidal power seriously and possible projects for tidal development are springing up all over the UK – in the Severn, Solway, Dee, Humber estuaries, Islay and the Pentland Firth. All of this is good but there is a danger that there will be too much research and not enough actual generation of electricity.
Against that background I suggest it might be sensible for the Department of Energy and Climate Change to create a UK Tidal Energy Enterprise that would have corporate shareholders and manage the growth of tidal power. We have been slow to start and it is essential that the emphasis now should be on the actual generation and availability of cheap electricity, cheaper than nuclear power, that will save costs for thousands of homes.
Timothy Rentonis the former MP for Sussex Mid (1974-97). He was raised to the peerage in 1997 and sits on the Conservative benches.
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