Letter: Use Shrewsbury’s weir to generate electricity
Friday 25th June 2010, 8:59AM BST.
Letter: I recently received a very encouraging letter from All Rivers Hydro Limited, a company in Shrewsbury that I believe has approached the council with regards to leasing land at the Castlefields weir site.
Their intention is to use the Severn in order to generate energy, not only producing a reasonable return to local investors, but also the potential saving of 1000 tonnes a year of CO2 emissions.
The new government Coalition agreement states: “We will encourage community-owned renewable energy schemes where local people benefit from the power produced. We will also allow communities that host renewable energy projects to keep the additional business rates they generate.”
I will be holding the Government accountable to this pledge, as I feel that it will be wholly beneficial for communities like Shrewsbury to have such green energy creating projects.
Daniel Kawczynski MP
Shrewsbury and Atcham
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As long as the salmon run is still functioning, then I can see no reason for this not to be the best renewable idea in ages.
The chance of getting any wind turbines near shrewsbury is so remote as to be absurd (nimbyism again) but who could this solution possibly bother ? Noise concerns ? I doubt it, the river is a bit loud anyway.
Please let’s let common sense prevail, renewable energy is the ONLY way forward. :)
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Let’s hope this is the first of many such projects.
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Daniel, I am 100% behind you on this one.
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Many years ago I was involved in several such mini-hydro schemes, two of which were built and are now working. One is at Beeston on the R Trent and one at Irlam in Manchester. Several other schemes never left the drawing board though.
The civil engineering of these schemes is fairly complex and risky so can often blow the budget of would-be operators. However, careful planning and construction can make them viable – the problem we found was unrealistic requirements from landowners such as the Environment Agency which put costs up too much.
These schemes do not cover their true costs and rely on a large amount of public subsidy but as a nation of rivers and canals, we should be promoting them at every suitable location and weaning ourselves off imported coal, oil and gas.
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