Swansea Tidal Lagoon - huge penalties for El-consumers

Utility Week and Private Eye (2 Nov) have reported on huge demands for subsidy that the Welsh government wanted to keep hidden (FoI refusal). 

The BEIS Department has lifted non-disclosure agreements on several documents and disclosed key points of TLP’s request for financial support from the Welsh government.The company requested £200 million loan funding from Welsh government at a two per cent interest rate and up to £261.1 million in annual equity down payments over 35 years.In return, TLP offered the Welsh government 90 per cent ownership of the lagoon at the end of the 35-year project’s proposed contract for difference when it would still owe up to £822.3 million worth of outstanding debt.The Welsh government would have also taken on the costs of maintenance and turbine replacement after about 50 years of operation as well as any decommissioning liabilities.

The government earlier released a summary of their value-for-money assessment that makes the following points:

• The proposed tidal lagoon at Swansea Bay would have a capital cost more than 3 times as much, per unit of electricity, as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.
• It would cost only around £400m to use offshore wind instead to generate the same power as the proposed £1.3bn lagoon at Swansea Bay.
• The entire proposed programme of tidal lagoons – consisting of 6 lagoons – would cost approximately 2 and a half times the cost of Hinkley, to produce around the same amount of electricity.
• Enough offshore wind to provide the same generation as the proposed programme of lagoons is estimated to cost at least £31.5bn less to build.
• The entire proposed programme of tidal lagoons could cost up to £20 billion more to produce the same quantity of electricity compared to generating that same electricity through a mix of offshore wind and nuclear.
• The proposed programme of tidal lagoons could cost the average household consumer up to an additional £700 between 2031 and 2050.
• The additional cost of this proposal on household bills is the same as every household in Wales paying £15,000.

The £1.3 billion Swansea Bay project, which TLP said would generate 572GW of electricity per annum, was intended as the first of a series that would harness tidal power around the Welsh coast, the second to be the Cardiff lagoon.

In a letter to the House of Commons’ Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Welsh Affairs select committee from Claire Perry, the energy and clean growth minister writes that government estimates of the programme’s economic benefits worked out at between £0.4 billion and £1.2 billion.“Even at the higher end of this range, the estimated wider benefits were less than the most optimistic impact of TLP’s lagoon programme on the costs of the electricity system – a cost of £2 billion to 2050.”Perry adds that the cost of electricity generated by the lagoon would be “more expensive” than alternative  low carbon sources.

The letter also outlined the key points of TLP’s request for financial support from the Welsh government as cited above - a request given support by Carwyn Jones on political grounds - an unquantified hope that it would benefit the Welsh economy.

Note that tidal power would have a high cost on the electricity system, due to the need to fill in the gaps of zero or low generation.  This is higher than the balancing costs for offshore wind power, so tidal lagoons come out even more expensive. The likely unacceptable environmental impacts of the Cardiff, Newport and Bridgewater Bay lagoons come on top of this poor system performance. Tidal stream turbines were not assessed, but are already promising much better prospects in Scotland.

Friends of the Earth (EWNI) were supportive of the Swansea Lagoon, as a trail-finder project for tidal power, but did not appreciate how hugely costly this initial project and potential follow-up projects have turned out.  The above histogram comes from work for the National Infrastructure Commission, to inform their judgment that tidal lagoons are an over-costly generation system. Strong supporter of renewables, Prof. Dave Elliott, has also written very critically of the cost, citing Ecotricity’s Dale Vince  (Facebook post June 1st):

 “The Swansea project is twice as expensive as tidal lagoons need to be, even for the first of a kind. There are alternative approaches and locations that would be far better value for money – if tidal lagoons are going to get government support (and I hope they do) – then it should be done through a proper competitive tender process – to make sure it’s value for money. The Swansea scheme would be an absurd waste of money, given the alternatives that exist. And it would tarnish the whole renewable energy industry. Currently Hinkley is the go-to project (to cite) for ridiculous costs – it can and should remain so.”

The question remains - how could the Welsh Government offer £200million to a project with such poor economic assessments?