Peel Energy has launched a Europe-wide search for consultants to help it gain planning consent for the Mersey Tidal Power scheme, which it hopes will be working by 2020.
According to Liverpool Daily Post, confirming the development, Anthony Hatton, marine power development manager, Peel Energy said: "This is an exciting and important milestone on the path to identifying a scheme that we aim to take to planning in 2011."
In the past, too, it has been shared that harnessing tidal energy from Liverpool Bay could be a possibility by 2020. Several times, the potential of the Mersey Estuary has been highlighted, indicating that a tidal power scheme in such location could supply a substantial portion of the energy needs of Liverpool and Merseyside.
Few years back, Peel Holdings, the owner of Mersey Docks & Harbour Company, and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) had commissioned a study, and engineering consultants Buro Happold carried it out.
A giant waterwheel stretching across the River Mersey could be used to generate renewable electricity for the Northwest, as per the same study.
It is also said that The Mersey Estuary, which has one of the largest tidal ranges in the UK, is also an ecologically diverse and internationally important area and this needs to be recognised in any scheme which comes forward.
