ABSTRACT
The force of running water has been used as a source of power for many centuries, driving equipment in a diversity of activities ranging from milling to mining. In rural areas it was being used also to generate electricity to supply local communities before the time when a public supply could be brought across the country by the national grid. In the current context the focus is still on generating electricity, being the most relevant to producing energy in a modern, industrialised society. Despite this, however, hydroelectric power has always been excluded from the provisions of the RO, on the grounds that most opportunities for its development in Britain had already been taken. It is, for a full commercial scale, very site specific. It needs fast-flowing water emanating from a large resource, or reservoir. Those circumstances tend to be found in mountainous areas, notably Scotland and Wales, where they are generally already well established. Trying to extend this to lower-lying areas would be inefficient and therefore an uneconomic use of ROCs. It could well be also that any such new hydroelectric schemes would involve the flooding of wide areas of land in order to create a sufficient head of water which would give rise to adverse environmental issues. That would include the loss of land which might well have a higher agricultural value than when reservoirs are created in steep valleys in the uplands. It would also bring into the equation for the owner the loss of European farm payments, as well as the concern of giving up food production even for the sake of working with a totally renewable resource such as water, and one that is almost entirely carbon neutral.
