Last summer the Government announced in its Energy Review that it would commission the SDC to explore the potential costs and benefits of a range of tidal technologies including the proposed Severn Barrage. This report will not be published until the autumn.

Commenting on this Morgan Parry, Head of WWF Cymru said:

"The Government commissioned the SDC to carry out independent research into the Barrage which includes consulting with a range of key stakeholders. Surely it is a matter of principle and governance for cabinet members to wait and hear the findings before publicly supporting such a controversial project? Or indeed has the Government chosen to ignore these before the White paper on energy is launched this Wednesday?"

"WWF Cymru agrees that there's huge potential to take advantage of the tidal range in the Severn Estuary for energy generation as it the second highest tidal range in the world. However, we strongly recommend that low-impact technologies are deployed to capture the energy of tides, rather than building a 10 mile concrete barrage.

"Such a construction would create irreversible damage to one of Wales and England's most important estuaries. Protecting natural systems is as urgent a challenge as tackling climate change, but we can do both. WWF Cymru believes that demand reduction, energy efficiency and decentralising electricity production is the answer to Wales's energy demands and opposes monolithic projects such as the Severn Barrage. It will be impossible to remove such a construction if better technologies emerge in future, or if unforeseen problems arise.

"We need renewable energy to reduce our impact on the climate, but the potential saving in carbon dioxide emissions from a barrage will not be fully achieved because of the huge cost in the construction and transportation of materials. If housing, road links, commercial development and airport developments are built as part of the development, CO2 emissions will soar. The barrage will also take at least 10 years to build, probably much longer since European laws designed to protect the environment would have to be changed to permit the development. We can and should move much more quickly than this, by investing in technologies that can make a difference now."

In 2003 the UK Government's most recent energy white paper - Our energy future - creating a low carbon economy, concluded that the Severn Barrage would "raise strong environmental concerns and raised doubts as to whether it would be fruitful to pursue it at this stage."