Liverpool City Region approves £650,000 for Mersey project business case

Liverpool skyline and the River Mersey (Photo: Pixabay/Creative Commons CC0)

 
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) approved £650,000 of funding to complete work on a business case for the proposed Mersey tidal energy project at a meeting held on July 27.

According to information from the meeting’s agenda documents, the funding will enable the completion of the full business case by November 2019.

As of July 2018, detailed information in the form a skeleton outline business case have been available to reach the next stage in the development of the business case, as a result of a process for which LCRCA gave approval in November 2017. The skeleton outline focused on assessing the technical and commercial viability of a tidal project in the Mersey or Liverpool Bay and its realistic chance of successful delivery.

The latest documents also state that formal engagement with the UK Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) on Mersey Tidal options commenced in April 2018, while further engagement with other principal national stakeholders including The Crown Estate is underway.

In February, LCRCA adopted Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram’s proposal to grant a share of £1.6 million from priorities fund in the Budget for 2018-2019 for the first two stages of feasibility work related that are being conducted by the Mersey Tidal Commission.

The Mersey Tidal Commission has been set up following Mayor Rotheram’s revival of the plans to develop a tidal energy project in the River Mersey in November 2017, with the former UK Chair of Ørsted, Brent Cheshire, appointed as Chair of the Commission for a one-year period to spearhead the plans.

The precise technology that will be used for the project is still unknown, but the Commission had said the technical solution would form a key part of the business case for the project.


MarineEnergy.biz staff