The completion of the Severn Tidal project on the coastline between Essay

The completion of the Severn Tidal project on the coastline between England and Wales - Essay Example The essay discusses that currently, 450 million litres of water passes through the Severn Estuary on the coastline between Wales and England. This water is a collection of inland rivers and waterbodies that deposit their flow into the Sea at this point. It provides a great opportunity for a power generation facility at that would tap energy for users in Wales and England. The government and key stakeholders including members of the international community have agreed that Britain should cut its carbon emission to just 20% by the year 2050. This means that Britain will have to cut its carbon emission by 80% in the next four decades. There is therefore the need for the people of the United Kingdom to identify alternative means of producing energy. The consumption of petroleum products and hydrocarbon fuels increased at a very fast rate after the Second World War. The Kyoto Protocol identified that Britain accounts for about 5% of the world's carbon emission into the atmosphere. This is highly disproportionate to the size of Britain which is relatively small. Since the trend of global warming is an international matter, Britain has come under severe pressure to identify ways of cutting down on its reliance on hydrocarbons. Thus, the proposition of the British government to cut down emissions by 80% in 2050 has become more of a serious objective now than ever. One of the core solutions to the problem is to identify renewable energy options for the United Kingdom. Tidal power generation is one of the options available to a nation like Britain in her bid to identify an alternative to the reliance on hydrocarbons. The Climate Change Act gives legitimacy and force to the plans of the UK government to cut down on CO2 emissions. This means that the state has a tougher legal obligation to put its resources to use to produce a strong and potent method of dealing with climate change. The UK government has been involved with some key stakeholders in an attempt to find soluti ons to this problem. The main stakeholders who have been involved in discussions on providing solutions are: 1. The UK Government 2. Private Sector Energy Companies 3. The UK Public 4. Environmental Groups in practice and academia. These groups have been involved in various degrees of consultation and discussions on the matter. The Severn coastline offers one of the greatest opportunities for the establishment of a renewable energy system. This can be done by creating dams, barrages or some other facilities that will make use of the energy generated by the movement of the water on the coastline. These stakeholders have spent two years undertaking feasibility studies about the creation of an energy generation system on the Severn coastline. These feasibility studies has taken an number of core issues into account. The findings of the Severn consultation activities indicate that the project is capable of providing 15% of Britain's energy needs. This means that a dam on the estuary can potentially provide a significant solution to the carbon emission targets that has been set by the UK government in the Climate Change Act. This will obviously curb the volume of carbon emission and reduce the effects of pollution emanating from the United Kingdom. In the process, the stakeholder group collected a total of 10 proposals about how a power generation system could be set up at the Severn coast of the United Kingdom. These ten proposals were assessed on the basis of benefits,