THE NEWS THAT a ￡1.5bn, 450-mile subsea cable will be built across the North Sea to enable hydropower from Norway to light up the UK has come as something of a shock to the entire UK hydropower sector when over 26,000 sites have been identified as suitable for generating hydropower in England alone. The UK has been generating energy from hydropower for more than a century; in fact Gilkes Ltd based in Kendal, England, has been manufacturing hydro turbines since 1853 - longer than any other company in the world. Currently almost 4,000GWh of electricity a year is coming from hydropower in the UK and the potential for another 2GW of capacity has been identified. With the right policy approach and investment it could be a major source of clean renewable energy, and by developing the sites already identified, the UK could generate more power than the 1.400MW that will come through from Norway. To put that another way, the cable from Norway will provide enough power for 750,000 homes and the sites we could develop here would power a million.
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