'Black to green': hydropower cleans up disused Welsh coal mine

Philippa Parry

18 April 2013

It's a testament to the power of community regeneration that Cwmclydach Countryside Park, a former colliery near Swansea, is now a beautiful nature haven.

The site where one of the last major mining disasters took place in 1965, in which 31 people died, has become a peaceful park lake for the enjoyment of local residents. A few weeks go, I went to take a look.

The park is in Cwmclydach town, a particularly deprived community in the Rhondda valley, South Wales.

It's home to Cwmclydach hydroelectric scheme, first conceived in 2004 by Phil Jenkins, of Cwmclydach Community Development Trust . He saw the potential for creating clean energy and bringing in a steady income for local people.

"They thought it'd be another of my 'hare-brained ideas'," laughs Phil. But once the hydro was seen to work, bringing power to about 45 houses, ideas quickly changed. "Now that they know what's involved they're very proud of it", he told me.

In 2011 the Trust was finally awarded funding from The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Welsh Government to make the hydro-scheme happen. But a series of errors and delays by both legislatures led to the funding being drastically reduced, and a 7 month limit put on implementation.

Trust Secretary Keith Jenkins told me they went from having £800,000 to just £200,000 - not nearly enough to get the scheme off the ground. It was only by luck that they found out that there'd been a mistake: the Trust was actually allotted double that, but it took a lot of letter-writing to sort things out.

Given the scheme's eventual success, plans are now in development for a second, larger hydro scheme on the site that could power up to 100 houses. An abstraction licence granting permission to make use of the water has already been granted to the Trust, but as yet is still looking for funding.

Hopefully the high profile of the existing scheme, which sees visitors coming from Northern Ireland, the Orkney Islands, and even New Zealand, will stand the plans in good stead. I really hope it goes ahead as the ideas they have are so inspiring.

The Trust believes its energy generation work in the Clydach Vale is offering a clean, positive energy pathway into the future. It's generating clean energy in an area that once produced the coal that fed steam engines throughout the world.

You could say it's going from 'black to green'. I wonder if other areas will follow suit.

To find out more about community renewable energy projects in the UK, please visit our Map of Green Britain.

Philippa Parry is a former volunteer on Friends of the Earth's Clean British Energy campaign.