Tidal Lagoon Power has today published an audit of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s statement on tidal lagoons, delivered to Parliament on June 25th alongside the Department’s six page value-for-money assessment for Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon and a three page ‘fact sheet’. See below.
The audit has been peer-reviewed by the Centre for Economics & Business Research and submitted to BEIS. The audit in part references a 2016 report by Aurora Energy Research on the impact of tidal lagoons on the GB power market. This is also published and below.
Keith Clarke CBE, Tidal Lagoon Power’s chair: “Readers of the audit can and will draw their own conclusions. Ours is that the BEIS statement on tidal lagoons was a manifest distortion of the truth.
“The audit demonstrates that the figures employed by BEIS to support its position on tidal lagoons are inaccurate by orders of magnitude, which raises serious questions about the approach taken and the conclusions drawn.
“BEIS’ inaction is still holding up tidal lagoons. The Department has not released a full and thorough value-for-money assessment for Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon, has not responded to the Hendry Review of tidal lagoons, and has continued to ignore our requests to meet with ministers for a fuller explanation of the position and approach taken.
“This is irresponsible and obstructs our appraisal of the options available to bring further funding into the business and to work up alternate approaches for delivering a pathfinder tidal lagoon at Swansea Bay without the award of a Contract for Difference from the UK Government”.