09-05-2025
Tidal power was once the future, but 800 years on it's still all at sea
The first loaf of bread baked from the flour of Woodbridge tide mill was eaten by a monk from the local abbey some time in the 12th century. There has been a lot of flour since. Through the late Middle Ages, twice a day, the tide came up the River Deben, filled the mill pond, then emptied, turning a wheel that ground Suffolk flour with utter reliability.
In dry periods when upriver watermills failed, or on still days when windmills didn't turn, the sea still came in and went out. The Woodbridge mill kept turning. It was turning when coal was the fuel of the future. It was turning when coal was the fuel of the past.
Some 620,000 tides later, MPs have been debating
