The Abingdon Hydro project was launched in 2010, with the aim of harnessing the power of the Thames at Abingdon Weir to make enough electricity for at least 200 homes.
The project’s model Archimedes Screw became a feature at many events promoting the project.
The project plans were first approved by the environment agency and district council in 2012. The share launch was at the end of 2014, and gained 420 community members who invested over £800K. Enthusiatic volunteers started clearing the land in February this year.
But finances and the clock have been against the project, and directors have decided not to go ahead.
Time was running out if the project was to be financially viable as it depended on getting the enhanced electricity tariff. The complexity of regulations slowed progress. Recent tax changes made it less attractive for additional investors to buy shares. And finally, the build price was higher than anticipated.
At last some common sense. Shame that the area was vandalised by premature clearing of the area and it just looks a mess now
Where would the road for the work on the weir go, would it go through Barton Fields? It may damage the peace and quietness of a park walk and coarse my trouble as I pass through Barton Fields Nature Reserve toward Weir then on into town Litter picking with my 4 wheeled trolley.
Anyway I look forward to finding out where this so called road will go!!!
Any news on what’s happened to investors money ?
Hopefully the site will be restored to its former state,i.e. new trees planted. The site should not have been cleared before
all plans had been passed and sufficient funds raised
Let’s hope the coucil fines them for the destruction of the trees last Feb. so they can be replanted.
Hopefully those overenthusiastic people who despoiled the river bank up there will be made to put some of it back as it was.We recently went by the Osney hydro project.I s that still a viable operation?
It was a well meaning project but I think that it would have only generated enough electricity to power 400 homes. As they are planning to build another 1000 in the green belt in North Abingdon it would have been a drop in the ocean. I hate the thought of Nuclear but the population of the UK is growing at an unprecedented rate. We are now the most densely populated country in the EU. Our resources will have to grow to support this
I hate to say ” I told them so” but when project was first launched I wrote to Richard saying the project was doomed from the start ! There were too many variables, to many unknowns and the finance plan was little more than a back of a fag packet calculation, he wrote back inviting me to join , so glad I didn’t !
Do the tree–huggers want the originsl Thames valley jungle to develop ? It may not have been done well but that scruffy part of the riverbank was grossly overdue for tree-management if the navigation and water flow is to be maintained long-term.
Shame about the Hydro project. Too many vested interests and red tape, perhaps. If UK doesn’t make proper use of all available renewable power sources, let’s hope that Culham’s forcasts for fusion power coming online are fulfilled.
First ISIS…now the Hydro project…Seems like Old Father Thames doesn’t like anyone meddling with…?
It’s nothing to do with tree huggers, rather the fact that people decided to go and chop down a number of trees without any permission to do so and what was done I don’t think comes under tree management.
As for fusion, it was said to be 40 years away when I had a tour of Jet in the early 80s and as far as I can make out it’s still 40 years away now.
Sorry, Spike S, it is hard to see how the trees that were cut down could have possibly affected water flow and navigation! Certainly the area of tree cutting now looks a mess.
As for your fusion hopes, sadly there’s not a hope in heaven or hell that it will ever produce usable power. In spite of the seductive D-T reaction, the technology is far too difficult.
Shows how “the little man” adheres to, and then gets [Archimedes] screwed over by the rules and red tape that the Big Guys and developers ride rough shod over.
And to think….a year or so ago there were issues about our environment, energy production, greenhouse gasses and stuff…I guess now though those issues have gone away.
Let’s just build some nuclear power stations, which is inevitable, be good at it….and just get on with it. I’ll happily have a canister of waste in my garden, and reap the free energy it will provide me (and my neighbours).
Whether or not everything has been done well on the project, I don’t think we should blame those who tried to get it going for the Government’s decision to change the rules at short notice.
Daniel, we’re not going to build nuclear power stations for ourselves, the Chinese are going to build them for us!
esromac, it’s a pity that the Fleischman-Pons experiment was a failure!!
…perhaps we should build them ourselves, as opposed getting them built for the least amount of money. Either way…let’s just get with it and become energy independent.
This was always an ill thought out and planned pipe dream – have said so all along and it would have been an eyesore on the river, as is the mess that they have made there. I trust, especially as so called environmentalists, they are going to sort it out.
What a lot of smug, self-satisfied schadenfreude against a group of people who had the impetus to get up and try to make a difference. It is very sad that this project floundered.
Believe it or not, we actually need sources of clean, renewable energy. Sad to see this project end, and feel sorry for the people who have put so much work into the whole project. Perhaps the govt should have helped the casualties of the rule changes. Abingdon Hydro would have been relatively small scale, but a big step in the right direction.
Well said Sarah and Andy.
Why are most people always SO negative on this blog?
I agree with Sarah, andy and G, and with Daniel’s point about energy secrurity.
If this was the fault of the this group of people it’s a bit of a coincidence that so many renewable energy firms have gone under in the last few weeks.
For whatever reason the Government have decided to drop the previous support for renewables, while pushing forward with nuclear, even if we consumers have to overpay the Chinese to do it.
I take umbrage at your comments Sarah, a group of well meaning people they
May well be, but there is a million miles between turning a pipe dream into reality as this exercise has well demonstrated and while I understand you may well be pationate about its demise o wonder just what those who invested in it are feeling? They did not have the appropriate planning consent in place when they set about the flora and flora by the weir with chain saw and axe, nor did they explore proper the implications pf building a supply road, let alone the lead time required by council to do so, and in the middle of this are the investors who stand to loose thousands because the project was not thought through! We would all like to have green, renewable energy, but sadly this one was not meant to be. On another note ask those who work the river for a living and they will tell you the flow of the Thames is now so poor it could not have driven the screw except for perhaps 2 or 3 months in spring each year, in fact today there is absolutely no current at all.
Just to shout over from the sidelines…I too was all for this development in principle too. And think it is a shame it hasn’t gone ahead.
I haven’t been to the exact spot it was planned for a while, but if memory serves me correct…the general flotsam and jetsam, the rubbish and general detritus that this rather rank, overgrown, littered area of the bank; wasn’t going to be missed by me. And….if enough money/energy could have been generated to run the Christmas lights, or produce hot air for the council offices…great.
Meanwhile…let’s build more houses and just connect them up to the grid – there’s enough imported gas to heat them. Will every new house have solar panels on the roof? Will they all use grey water systems? Each estate will surely have ground source heat pumps? Oops…sorry…we don’t want those poor developers to spend a penny more than they have to…not whilst you and me should, really, turn our TVs off stand-by.
The wider issues the situation raises is of more interest, personally. All the bunkham about global warming. The need to be resiliant against the huge issues our planet faces regarding resources, enegy, mass displacement of people, feeding the people, land use, planning regulations….all of it…how we address the interplay and future of all those are highlighted by this little scheme and its cancellation.
Still…Christmas is coming…pass me the laminated book of dreams…I wanna buy some tat from China.
Captain K – I don’t think the investors need you to speculate on what they might think. They were made well aware of the risks – and I could equally well speculate that most of them put their money in to help give practical support to a project which they already supported in other ways. Let’s let them speak for themselves.
Thank goodness there are still people around who are not 100% risk averse and prepared to try to do something with a bit of vision. It is a shame they have to take so much flak.
Ah, the font of all things Abingdon, did you invest then Hestet? If so perhaps you can confirm that investors were made fully aware that when they handed over their hard earned cash the project had not gained full planning consent? Surely even you with your rose tinted glasses on can’t excuse this almighty cock up? But then again it’s a prime example of how Abingdon, or rather its occupants have been poorly served over the past decade?
First there wa Abits, the ill thought out traffic scheme that ground the town to a halt and had a second river crossing as its pre requisite, then the choose Abingdon partnership ( weren’t you a member?) that squandered a couple of hundred thousand pounds of rate payers money on achieving nowt! Then the loyalty card that cost us another £15k, that just dissapered in a puff of smoke! Now the hydro project and so it goes on, and before anyone says this is negative writing, what’s there to be positive about? I see the latest photos of the bid team features the same old faces that have managed to reincarnate themselves again !
I don’t invest in things I don’t understand, but, having met some of the ‘hydro people’, I think they were believers and not the kind of ‘spivs’ some people seem to think (Heaven forfend) might be involved in certain other ‘cozy deals’ that are done around town. Someone assure me the rumours I hear of developers playing the Vale Council like a trout-on-the-line aren’t true …. surely not! Surely, none of our councilors can by led to slaughter by the nose …
I think the hydro project was well intended and headed by people for whom the commercial world was strange terrain. They didn’t factor-in that the idiot-government can change it’s mind at the drop of a hat and bugger-up everyone’s calculations.
In a Perfect World they would have just ‘gone for it’, but they seemed to do more talking (and chopping down trees) than was needed. I’d like to think that all investors will only lose a small percentage of their investment (as a rule, I reckon 25% on something like this is getting off lightly)
As an aside … were I The Vale I’d be checking that the Old Gaol developer is not hitting a cash-flow problem. Not saying it is, but it’s always worth keeping an eye on your remaining investment.
Newcomer. Your faith in The Veil is very sweet.
If I were The Veil, I’d kick back, feet on my desk, hands behind my head, pondering on another job well done…like they were when Developers, without permission, started building on Drayton Rd.
Likewise…I imagine it doesn’t occur to them at all whether planning constraints, requirements etc will have been met. And, if The Town is still owed anything from the terrible deal that they struck for us….oh well.
I am very sad the project is not going ahead. They only cut down one tree last February and that was found to be rotten and could have fallen, so it was just as well it came down. In fact a rare plant has colonised the disturbed ground, the Trifid Bur-Marigold (Bidens tripartita), a new record for the area. One point that has not been mentioned is that the government has seen fit to impose the Climate Change Levy on alternative as well as conventional energy schemes, a quite monstrous as well as totally illogical decision. This would have reduced the revenue from the scheme still further. Many thanks must go to Richard and his dedicated team for all their hard work which, very sadly, has come to nought, at least in the short term.
Daniel – there was a plan to do much of what you describe, and the new Government dropped it.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/government-scraps-zero-carbon-target/5076459.article
Its all about cost and what is achievable Neil. I wonder how many of the fuel customers in this country realise that they are paying £18 billion per annum for subsidy of green energy. This is levied from energy bills.
Do we rely want to be paying even more to put in place zero carbon?
As I understand it ( and I may be wrong!!) all of the ‘smoke and mirrors’ about high energy bills and ‘go compare’ etc is a bit of a fallacy. The Energy Companies are strapped for cash,,!! They are not raking in the millions. Correct me if I am wrong but this is my understanding of the situation .
Interesting reading Neil, thank you…but, in the scheme of things…it is/was only ever lipservice being paid. And by making it seem like a step in the right direction, I think it just veneers over the issue (if there were one).
Anyway…at least the developers won’t be out of pocket.
How about using some of the investment money for a monument to be erected on the cleared site to the Hydro that never was? We need a name for the area – how about “WATER ZERO”? The efforts of all involved over 5 years should be commemorated.
Michael – the best monument for this scheme that was frankly doomed from the start would be for Abingdon Hydro to clear up the mess they created in January and plant a few trees to replace those felled. AND it wasn’t just one tree either AND it wasn’t rotten. Even AH admit their actions were a cock-up but it’s now time to put it right. The felled timber was also offered as free firewood instead of being disposed of in an environmentally sensitive way. So the great achievement has been to re-allocate money from well-meaning individuals to well-healed consultants and release CO2 into the environment!
Next step is to stop the ‘Carbon Cutters’ (sic) weed patch on Abbey Meadow from re-appearing next year!
Mike@34…I take it that the comment was made jokingly. The Bee Friendly and the Edible Gardens were/are extremely interesting and a source of good ideas. Likewise the Wildflower maze. In addition they are very educational features and fitted in well with the whole landscape of the riverside.
Well done to Carbon Cutters for all of their hard work.