Up to 25 hydroelectric schemes generating enough renewable energy to power 40,000 homes may be sited on stretches of rivers including the Severn and the Trent.

British Waterways, which manages more than 2,200 miles of navigable canals and rivers, claims that its project will save 170,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Planning permission is being sought for the first five schemes, to be built next to weirs and dams on the Trent in the Midlands and the Aire, Ouse and Don in Yorkshire.

British Waterways said that it was also exploring ways of harnessing hydropower on the Severn. Further energy may be generated from the “feed” of water into canals from reservoirs, of which the authority owns 90.

Canals being considered for the scheme would not be man-made but rivers converted into waterways, which retain a natural flow.

The total cost of the scheme is expected to cost £120 million and so far £20 million has been pledged by Climate Change Capital, a £1.1 billion investment fund focused on renewable energy technology.

The cash will be spent over the next three years, installing turbine equipment and other infrastructure to generate and distribute about 40 megawatts of power, starting in 2010. Passages for fish will be built into the infrastructure where necessary.

British Waterways, a not-for-profit public corporation, is collaborating on the project with the Small Hydro Company to generate 210,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy a year. Last year British Waterways announced a plan to use riverbanks to build 50 wind turbines that will have the capacity to generate 100 megawatts of renewable electricity.

Any income generated from the schemes will be reinvested in the maintenance of the waterways.

Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, said that from next year the Government will introduce a “feed-in tariff” for small-scale renewables that would reward projects such as the hydroelectric schemes with cash payments. The renewable energy industry is struggling because of a lack of funding for big schemes resulting from the credit crunch.

About 40 per cent of the United Kingdom's renewable electricity is provided by hydropower but few large schemes have been constructed since the 1980s. Globally, hydro generates about 20 per cent of electricity requirements.

[end story] — A report published today by the Centre for Policy Studies warns that Britain is developing a dangerous overreliance on natural gas for electricity generation just as domestic supplies of the fuel from the North Sea are running out.

By 2020, gas-fired electricity will account for 70 per cent of all the UK's conventional power-generating capacity, the study said. “This over-reliance on one fuel will be undesirable,” according to Tony Lodge, author of the report. “Government must act now to end this dangerous dependency.” The price of delay would be “higher prices and possible supply interruptions in the future”.

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