LONDON, June 9 -- Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change Tuesday announced it had given a go-ahead to the plan to build the world's first tidal lagoon power plant at Swansea Bay in South Wales.

The decision is a major boost to China Harbor Engineering Company (CHEC), a state-owned enterprise, which was announced a few days ago as the successful bidder for a six-mile wall for the project.

It paves the way for the construction of the tidal lagoon with a capacity to produce 240MW of power, enough to supply electricity to more than 120,000 homes.

"We need more clean and home-grown sources of energy, which will help to reduce our reliance on foreign fossil fuels," Lord Bourne, parliamentary under secretary of state for the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Wales Office, said on Tuesday.

"Low carbon energy projects like the tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay could bring investment, support local jobs and help contribute to the Welsh economy and Swansea area", he added.

Mark Shorrock, chief executive of the company behind the Swansea Bay scheme, Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay, said: "Wales led the way providing the fuel for the industrial revolution. We are now entering the era of the climate change revolution."

The Swansea Bay project is one of six lagoon programs proposed for Britain's west coast, four of which are in Wales and the other two are respectively in Somerset and Cumbria of England.

The lagoons are designed to capture incoming and outgoing tides behind giant sea walls and to use the weight of the water to power turbines generating electricity. The energy is captured by turbines from two incoming and two outgoing tides each day. It gives a predictable generating window averaging 14 hours a day.

The Swansea Bay lagoon will see the construction of a sea wall, stretching for more than 8 km and reaching more than 3 km out to sea. The aim is for the project to be generating power by 2022.