A planning application for Swansea’s innovative tidal lagoon project – including a new oyster-shaped visitor centre and maintenance building – will be submitted “within the next few weeks”, according to the special purpose vehicle company backing the project.
As a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay (TLSB) company will be submitting an application to the government’s Planning Inspectorate.
Approval for the project, with construction headed by Costain, could come as early as spring next year. It will be the world’s first, purpose-built, tidal energy lagoon when connected to the national grid, which could happen between 2018 and 2020.
The project, costed at upwards of £850m, would mean more than 120,000 homes having access to renewable electricity for at least 120 years, TLSB claims.
TLSB must also apply for a marine licence from Natural Resources Wales.
"Our iconic design responds to the challenging marine environment some 3.5km out into Swansea Bay."
Paul Newman, Juice Architects.
This week, TLSB released images of the proposed 3,500 sq m visitor and maintenance building, designed by Juice Architects, that will be powered entirely by renewable energy.
The building will be located along an 18.5km sea wall that will create the lagoon whose tidal waters will pass through turbines along the wall.
Oyster fishing was once an important industry in bay, employing 600 people at its height in the 1860s. “Our iconic design responds to the challenging marine environment some 3.5km out into Swansea Bay,” said Paul Newman of Juice Architects.
“The design creates a building that expresses the potential of the ocean and represents the clean renewable energy to be generated while also is reflective of the bay’s heritage.”
Around 100,000 visitors a year are expected at the building, designed to be an educational, cultural and leisure facility. Visitors will reach the building, a series of overlapping shells forming a bowl-like structure, on foot, by bicycle or by electric bus.
It will include public galleries, a cafe, lecture theatre, educational rooms and exhibition space. Propellers, spanning around 7m, for some of the lagoon project’s bi-directional turbines, will be visible through a glass floor in the ground-floor gallery.
Areas of the roof will be given over as a habit for wildlife and be part of an educational experience for visitors.
The visitor centre will be entirely self-sufficient with all its energy coming from renewable sources, including from recycled waste and roof-top solar panels.
Hopes for south Wales becoming a global showpiece for tidal power now rest on the Swansea project after the on-again, off-again 18.5-km Severn Estuary Barrage proposal was torpedoed last year.
A report by the House of Commons’ Energy and Climate Change Committee said the business case was unproven and the £30bn proposal had a “lack of information and a perceived lack of transparency”.
Promoter Hafren Power had been working with construction by Arup, Bechtel and Mott MacDonald and Bechtel, and architect Marks Barfield.
