Britain became great through
two major developments in its history. One was the use of waterpower to start
the industrial revolution and the other was the control that it exercised
worldwide over oceans and seas after the Battle of Trafalgar. Consequently, the
title of Great Britain was bestowed upon the land.
Not surprisingly, the world
has undergone many changes since those days. Most significantly, Great Britain
now has a very small navy that is unable to command the seas and our
present-day industries are driven by power that is generated mainly from fossil
fuels and imports.
Today, grey storm clouds of
economic recession loom large on the horizon of this country. A period of
austerity has replaced that era when the nations of the world eagerly purchased
the wide variety of goods produced by the mills and foundries of Great Britain.
In the modern world, the majority of those items (and many others besides) can
be produced in a multitude of countries and shipped to buyers around the globe
in days, so we have been unable to remain competitive on either price or
delivery. As a result, only our specialised goods and services stand any chance
at all of achieving commercial success.
Therefore, it is no
exaggeration to say that those ‘glory days’ of yesteryear have now become a
very distant memory - and, unfortunately, Great Britain is no longer as economically great as it used to be.
However, this sad state of
affairs could undergo a complete transformation and be brought to a welcome end
within a very short period of time, and water could once again become the
resource on which we base our economic development, as explained in the
following paragraphs.
Energy is one of the few items
that almost every country in the world desperately needs and is willing to
purchase, and vast amounts of renewable, sustainable ‘green energy’ are contained
in the thousands of square miles of territorial waters that surround our island
nation. In fact, there is enough energy there to satisfy the whole of Great
Britain’s demands for electricity many times over. Consequently, we would be left with a huge surplus that could be exported to Europe and
beyond.
Our shores are completely
surrounded by Marine Energy - in the form of both tidal flows and wave action -
and several companies are already pushing forward with expensive developments
of propeller-type tidal-stream generators that are very similar to wind
turbines in both appearance and function. Furthermore, even though only five per
cent of our territorial waters provide flows that are fast enough to be
suitable for such equipment, those developers suggest that, by exploiting those
areas alone, it should be possible to produce as much as twenty per cent of the
electricity that the U.K. needs.
However, several companies
and designers are working on devices that can capture commercially-viable amounts
of that renewable, ‘green energy’ from even the slower tidal flows that abound
in approximately eighty per cent of our waters. Large-scale deployment of such
equipment would result in a positive contribution to the nation’s balance of
payments in addition to guaranteeing the energy independence of our country.
Although that hostile and
often dangerous environment presents the industry with enormous engineering
challenges, the solutions have already been developed owing to the ideal
training ground of the North Sea oil and gas extraction projects. In fact, such
ventures have been providing many of the experts that will continue to be
needed as our new ‘green energy’ replaces the oil and gas that are rapidly
disappearing in a way that cannot possibly happen to the tides.
Why is it taking such a long time
for this form of renewable energy to realise its full potential?
Two major factors can be
considered responsible for the extremely slow pace of the steady progress that
is being made with these developments. One of them is the negative attitude
that has been adopted by the government and its agencies, and the other is the
general public’s lack of awareness of this vast source of ‘green energy’.
Most notable, perhaps, is the
nation’s apparent failure to grasp the significance of this new industry in the
creation of employment opportunities. For example, hundreds of thousands of
jobs could be involved in the production of turbines and associated deployment
equipment, and large numbers of fishermen and other mariners could be needed to
guard and manage the fish and crustacean nurseries that the tidal energy ‘farms’
would create.
PAUL HALES
DIRECTOR
HALES ENERGY LTD
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