In June 2015, the UK government awarded planning permission to the scheme, which developers said would be able to provide electricity for 155,000 homes. The closest the UK has ever been to developing such a project is a £1.3bn tidal lagoon that was proposed in Swansea Bay, off the southern Welsh coast. The bigger opportunity for UK tidal remains tidal range power, which is generated when large barrages or artificial lagoons are constructed, like at La Rance. While tidal stream offers new opportunities, the volume of energy generated by them remains very small in comparison with overall UK demand. The country’s tidal stream sector could support 4,000 jobs by 2030 and 14,500 by 2040, bringing massive investment to deprived coastal areas the government is seeking to boost as part of its ‘levelling up agenda’, shows a 2018 report from the UK think tank Energy Systems Catapult. Pioneering tidal power development should allow the UK to develop a strong home-grown renewables industry, just as the country has done with offshore wind. One company at the forefront of this new drive is Orkney-based Orbital Marine Power, which was the first company in the world to successfully connect a floating tidal turbine to the grid, doing so in 2011. “We are on a mission to unlock a new source of clean, predictable power for millions of people, homes and businesses around the world,” a company spokesperson told Energy Monitor. This will send a “clear signal to investors” that this is a viable technology, a spokesperson for industry group RenewableUK told Energy Monitor.Īlready, seven operational tidal stream projects with a capacity of 9.1MW are in operation, with 2.3MW under construction and a further 390MW approved for development, according to RenewableUK. In November 2021, it was announced that in the fourth allocation round of the UK’s contracts for difference scheme held at the end of 2021, £20m per year will be ring-fenced for tidal stream projects. Tidal technology is not being completely ignored by the UK government, though. He says “wind and solar energy can do much of the heavy lifting to reduce reliance on fossil fuels”, but argues that the UK would also benefit from tidal power to further diversify the power mix. Simon Hamlyn, CEO of the British Hydropower Association, describes the absence of any clear target for marine power as an “incomprehensible omission”.

The main priority instead, is to build 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 24GW of nuclear power by 2050. Yet the UK’s new energy security strategy, published in April 2022, only made a passing mention of pursuing “opportunities afforded by our geography and geology, including tidal and geothermal”, in a section titled “Solar and other technologies”.

Renewable electricity from tidal power also offers another route away from hydrocarbons originating in oil-producing autocracies, something that has become a key political priority following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. These projects are situated across Great Britain, including in Swansea Bay, Merseyside, the North Somerset Coast and the North Wales Coast. Industry group the British Hydropower Association adds that tidal range projects under development – all of which are currently stalled – would deliver 10GW of new capacity by 2030 if they were to receive permission and adequate funding. A 2021 study from academics at Edinburgh University found that tidal stream alone has the potential to deliver 11% of the UK’s current annual electricity demand, which is the same as the combined contribution of solar and biomass over the past year. However, the UK – which features the second-strongest tides in the world after Canada, and is a densely populated island of nearly 70 million people – could be an “exception”, Hogan adds. “In North America, the only major tidal energy locations are in Alaska and along the Maine coast, and while there are good sites along the coast of China and Korea, these are still quite limited.” “Tidal is viable in only a limited number of places, most of which are very far from any significant demand centres,” explains Mike Hogan from think tank the Regulatory Assistance Project. One reason why tidal power has not received widespread interest is because – even if the sea produces a lot of energy – there is actually not a huge number of settlements near seas with high tides. The UK is the prime location for tidal power

Tidal power stations operate by using