Flood protection and marine power in the Wash estuary, United Kingdom

Abstract

The Wash estuary is situated at the English east coast. Covering an area of approximately 615 km2, the estuary is among the largest estuaries in the United Kingdom. Adjacent to the Wash estuary, the Fenlands are situated, a low lying area covering almost 3900 km2. Within the last century several coastal flood disasters and near flood disasters have occurred in the area. In view of the predicted climate changes it is proposed to construct a privately funded storm surge barrier across the estuary, including a tidal power plant to generate marine power. The thesis focuses on establishing the technical and economical feasibility of such combined structure, taking into account the effect of the barrier on the tidal amplitude within the basin by means of a storage basin approach. Furthermore both the present values of the investment costs and the revenues from generating energy and reducing the flood risk are computed over the structure’s lifetime. The main conclusions are that technically it is feasible to construct a tidal power plant and a storm surge barrier within the Wash estuary. However, presently the computed break-even energy price is too high for the project to be competitive with other low carbon energy sources. Hence, the project is considered to be not economical viable. In the performed economical analysis possible financial incentives from both the UK Government and the European Committee, such as: carbon pricing, buy-out price and Feed-in-Tariffs are not included. Depending on global developments, the project may become feasible on the medium and long term (2020-2050).