Speeches by Reader.

“I just have a request for Sarah, if you would not mind writing back to us on how the 70% local content is calculated. That feels extremely high and optimistic, from my experience. Having delved into other major infrastructure projects recently that have very high local content, it is quite hard to substantiate. That fi…”

“Is the impact of construction works a limitation or is it not something we need to worry about?”

“Yes, that is fair. I have one final quick question. I will start with you, Sarah. Previous projects have not gone ahead because of environmental concerns over the construction of the projects and the impact that the construction would have. Would this scheme or even a demonstrator scheme have a similar limitation and r…”

“We can look at comparators, and Sizewell is a good example. The scheme has managed to restore an area of land to almost SSI levels to deal with mitigation on that scheme. Would this latest-case evidence of the ability to deal with mitigation give you confidence in what could be achieved on the Severn?”

“Building on the environmental matters, I will come on to habitat regulations specifically. Does the need to comply with habitat regulations present a significant barrier to development of tidal power in the Severn?”

“In your recommendations as a commission, you said that Treasury needs to expand the application of funding and financing frameworks based on the model. What changes do you think you need to see from Treasury?”

“So we are potentially 15 years away from being able to deliver at scale.”

“I was going to ask about funding and finance, but, just before I do, I would like to paraphrase what I have just heard. If we could find the right site, and we do not know where that site is, and if we get public money to do the viability, and we do not know if we can get that yet, we could possibly build a commercial …”

“You could therefore get the clean energy that homes desperately need and people desperately need to reduce their energy bills.”

“It probably does a little bit. One way of dealing with habitat regulations could be the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the ability to bypass regulations using the EDP process. Would that help speed up delivery or would that create environmental risk?”

“I just have a request for Sarah, if you would not mind writing back to us on how the 70% local content is calculated. That feels extremely high and optimistic, from my experience. Having delved into other major infrastructure projects recently that have very high local content, it is quite hard to substantiate. That fi…”

“The challenge is also that you need grid connection. I imagine this is not in the NESO plan, so we are going to have all sorts of challenges around that. I just wanted to clarify that, because this is a great thing we could do, but we are talking about 15 years’ time, in which case the workforce challenges and capacity…”

“Is the impact of construction works a limitation or is it not something we need to worry about?”

“Yes, that is fair. I have one final quick question. I will start with you, Sarah. Previous projects have not gone ahead because of environmental concerns over the construction of the projects and the impact that the construction would have. Would this scheme or even a demonstrator scheme have a similar limitation and r…”

“We can look at comparators, and Sizewell is a good example. The scheme has managed to restore an area of land to almost SSI levels to deal with mitigation on that scheme. Would this latest-case evidence of the ability to deal with mitigation give you confidence in what could be achieved on the Severn?”

“You could therefore get the clean energy that homes desperately need and people desperately need to reduce their energy bills.”

“It probably does a little bit. One way of dealing with habitat regulations could be the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the ability to bypass regulations using the EDP process. Would that help speed up delivery or would that create environmental risk?”

“You would need to develop quite a comprehensive habitat regulations assessment. We have heard that there is still a lot of data missing. How do we avoid over-engineering a solution and the plan becoming another bat tunnel?”

“Building on the environmental matters, I will come on to habitat regulations specifically. Does the need to comply with habitat regulations present a significant barrier to development of tidal power in the Severn?”

“You would need to develop quite a comprehensive habitat regulations assessment. We have heard that there is still a lot of data missing. How do we avoid over-engineering a solution and the plan becoming another bat tunnel?”