By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News

The Indian state of Gujurat is planning to host Asia’s first commercial-scale tidal power station.

The company Atlantis Resources is to install a 50MW tidal farm in the Gulf of Kutch on India’s west coast, with construction starting early in 2012.

The facility could be expanded to deliver more than 200MW.

The biggest operating tidal station in the world, La Rance in France, generates 240MW, while South Korea is planning several large facilities.

To claim the title of “Asia’s first”, the Indian project will have to outrun developments at Sihwa Lake, a South Korean tidal barrage under construction on the country’s west coast.

Atlantis’s recent feasibility study in Gujurat concluded that the state had good potential for tidal exploitation. …

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