Eco Factor: Five-point tidal energy scheme to provide green electricity.
The British government has shortlisted five ingenious solutions to provide green electricity to about 5% of urban homes in the UK. The £8billion project comprises five sub-projects to harness the 12 yard tides, twice a day in the Severn Estuary. The energy till now was going to waste, but if the project comes to life, it will be able to prevent millions of tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
The five proposals include a Bridgewater Bay lagoon, which would impound a section of the estuary to generate 1.36GW of green electrical power, a Fleming lagoon, which is a similar project generating another 1.36GW, a Cardiff-Weston barrage, which is one of the most controversial projects out of the five, a Shoots barrage capable of generating 1GW of electricity and finally a Beachley barrage which is the smallest of the five proposals and will be able to generate 625MW of green electricity. The project developers estimate that a prototype could be built by 2012.
The projects will depend on a lagoon structure, which will be made from stone, rubble and long sausage-shaped bags filled with silt collected from the channel floor. Each of these bags will be about a kilometer long and 9 feet high. The 12 yard high walls of these lagoons will be landscaped with grass, which would serve as homes for birds and insects.
The Dark Side:
Four of the five projects have received environmentalists’ approval, however, the Cardiff-Weston barrage is an exception, as environmentalists fear that the structure would destroy thousands of acres of mudflats and salt marshes that are vital to breeding birds.
Via: DailyMail
