Whoever coined the saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” might have been unconsciously intending, gently, to warn environmentalists to remember that all change, including renewable energy alternatives, comes with an ecological price-tag. If we want to use cleaner, greener, energy, our coastlines will just have to grin and bear the costs: different costs, and possibly preferable costs, but costs nonetheless.

The problems we’re facing
The introduction to Greenpeace’s wonderful 1987 book Coastline ended with the hope that it was not too late to inspire participation in the fight to save the coastline. Since then we have seen enormous, continuing, activity in the energy sector, bringing continuing costs. In 2003, UK offshore production of oil totalled 87 million tonnes. This involved 372 oil spill reports that the government knows about, with 83 tonnes of oil entering the briny. And 2003 was a good year: the average for 1991-2003 was 267 tonnes spilled, somewhat skewed by two especially bad years which had 1,390 tonnes between them. These spillages are in addition to the 5,190 tonnes of oil ‘discharged with produced water’ – oil which cannot be separated from the water after they have mixed during the drilling process. All this is without mentioning the tanker disasters: The Braer deposited 84,000 tonnes off Shetland in 1993, and the Sea Empress 70,000 tonnes off South West Wales in 1996.

So oil is problematic for our coastline: what about our biggest single non-CO₂ producing energy source (ignoring the argument as to whether it really is so clean), nuclear power? The Irish Sea is described as ‘the most radioactive sea in the world’ following many years of emissions and deposits from Sellafield. The Marine Conservation Society draw attention to the effects of Technetium-99 and Caesium-137 on coastal flora and fauna, and the Low Level Radiation Campaign demonstrate significant human health effects in Wales and Ireland. Sellafield is a special case, in that it stores and reprocesses nuclear waste, but with all of Britain’s commercial nuclear stations being on the coast, and considerable uncertainty surrounding their long-term impact, we cannot be sure of a free lunch here either, even if the UK government embarks on a large nuclear expansion with new, supposedly safer technology.

Considering the options
We could, in theory, avoid all environmental impacts on the coastline from energy production, at some time in the future, by obtaining all our supplies from inland. There are several hundred years of coal (which, by the way, can be burnt much more cleanly and efficiently these days) under our inland feet, and in theory solar power could supply much, if not all, of our electricity and heat. If preserving the coastline is a top priority, perhaps we should go down these roads.

But even if we do this, it would be fraught with problems. Concern about climate change almost certainly precludes further use of coal, current photovoltaics are a very long way from providing much of our electricity, solar heating can only do so much in the UK, and anyway 35% of our energy goes on transport, which could, at a big pinch, be powered by coal-fired electricity, but not realistically by solar. So what can the new offshore technologies offer, and what would be the environmental price for the "lunch" they would offer? There are three main options: tidal power, wind power, and wave power.

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