The current flooding across the UK is devastating. What is even more shocking is that latest figures show that the government are spending 4 times the amount on green energy subsidies than they are flood defences.

The thing that shocks me the most is that these aren’t interrelated forms of spending as they stand?

The two constants we have in the UK are the rain and the tides. Surely in these environmentally conscious times any spending to improve defences or limit the impact of nature should include provisions to generate local power at the same time? British Columbia in the US are almost on the verge of self-sufficiency with run-of-the-river hydro schemes, where weirs are essentially turned into low environment impact power stations.

In fact as this article show it looks like run-of-the-river hydro is increasingly becoming the latest green buzz word.

So why are the Environment Agency not on this like a rash? Complaining that the funding is not there simply highlights their lack of creativity in securing budgets for vital work. Look for example at their recommended scheme for the Thames from Datchet to Teddington. After the floods in 2007 the following proposal remained unimplemented as they could only secure half the funding from the government.

However, if you look at this in more detail, it includes major upgrades to 3 weirs. None of which seems to be proposing run-of-the-river schemes. If there is 4 times the funding available for green power subsidies it seems remiss not to have explored these as a way of getting the flood defences built? Especially as run-of-the-river schemes would require no real change to the flow of the river and would be a win for green energy provision.

There are rivers with weirs all over the UK. All of which run continually, none of which dry up. Why are we trying to be world leaders in wind energy? Surely we should be leading the world in run-of the-river technology at the same time as having cause and funds to better control flood planes?