Climate Change Minister Greg Barker today called on enterprising communities and businesses to harness the power of their rivers and streams to generate both green electricity and money, as he visited the Torrs Hydro scheme in New Mills, Peak District.
The Minister said: "When it comes to the UK’s performance on renewables there’s much more to do and hydropower is currently a missed opportunity.
"To do that we need to make it easy and attractive for local people to revive our traditional waterways and help produce more local clean energy."
He added that he wanted to see old mills and turbines that existed before the National Grid brought back to life as well. Under the Feed-in Tariffs scheme (FiTs) these old machines will get support as "remanufactured as new" hydro equipment.
Hydropower currently generates the equivalent of 1.4 per cent of electricity demand in the UK and the Government says it has the potential to contribute up to a further one per cent – enough to power the equivalent of one million homes.
Help guide
To help drive forward the ambitious new plan, The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is launching a new hydropower help guide, prepared by the Environment Agency, which offers advice to groups looking to use the power of local streams, weirs or rivers to cut emissions and generate new income for their areas.
"This hydro help guide will give clear information on how to get new schemes up and running," said Barker, adding, Feed-in Tariffs are here to stay and we confirmed last week that we don’t want to change the tariffs until 2013 to ensure ongoing investment in new projects.”
Malcolm Fergusson, head of climate change at the Environment Agency, added "Hydropower can help in the fight against climate change but it has to be sustainable. At the Environment Agency it is our job to ensure that hydropower schemes include measures to protect the local environment."
'We have seen a tenfold increase in hydropower applications in the past two years, and we expect to deal with even more in the future as developers and communities strive to take advantage of new financial incentives.
“To help communities and developers we have published a range of guidance on our website – including the new community hydropower guide. We have also made our permitting process simpler, including offering one single point of contact within the Environment Agency for the developer. “
Torrs Hydro is a community share scheme supported by local action group, H2OPE and the Co-op Community Fund. The scheme earns an income from the energy exported to the local Co-op supermarket.