22nd June 2020
Subject: Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon
Dear Mr Crabb
I hope that you are aware of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme interview conducted by Dominic O’Connell with Mr Mark Shorrock, Chief Executive of Tidal Lagoon Power (replay on BBC Sounds starts at 00:20:46). In it, Mr Shorrock confirmed the following:
– at the end of this month the planning permission for TLP’s Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon will lapse;
– everything is in place for work to start except that TLP’s decommissioning plan has not been signed off by BEIS.
Wales must have this tidal power pathfinder project. It is exactly the sort of green investment Britain needs, as identified by the Committee For Climate Change; its projected UK spend rate is 84p in the £. Furthermore the technology in question has more than one potential location in Welsh waters; and, as if the case wasn’t strong enough already, when interviewed later in the same programme (02:16:47) Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Change and Finance Adviser to Boris Johnson for the COP26 Climate Summit, called for Britain to plan for a sustainable post-COVID rebuild of the UK economy.
The Whitehall barriers to this essential project must be removed; I urge you to apply and maintain maximum possible pressure.