Eco towns – when where and why?

When and where will the new eco-towns be built? So far there are thirteen sites that are likely to see large scale development as new towns, so called “eco-towns” in England. These developments are supposed to be built to exacting new standards. The homes are supposed to be within a ten minute walk of buses and trains. At least one person living in each eco home in each eco town should have  a car free journey to work and the eco towns should be “zero carbon” overall.

These requirements for eco towns are curious. People’s behaviour is conditioned partly by their environment and partly by their requirement to earn a living. Simply because you make it easy for people to walk to work, does not mean that most people will not drive to work, if that is what they have to do to earn a living in another place.

I do not understand what a “zero carbon” means in the context of an eco town. The carbon emissions for buildings will come from heat energy and electrical energy. Heat can be stored, to a limited extent, but electricity cannot be stored in a way that makes environmental sense.  No renewable energy proper, such as wind or solar can provide 100% of the needs for 100% of the time. Night time prevents solar from doing this and the wind does not blow all the time.

Eco towns will end up burning biomass, usually wood pellets shipped in from abroad in some form of combined heat and power system. This will not be a carbon neutral or zero carbon way of doing things.  It will also create health risks from wood burning and require large transportation of volumes of wood pellets, done using fossil fuel.

Eco towns will probably rely on heat and power sourced outside their communities, often many miles away. They will not be genuinely carbon neutral and my suspicion is that the designation of a new town as an eco town will simply be a way of using a false environmental claim to “sell” the concept of new towns being built in the countryside to people.

Two of the proposed eco towns are in Yorkshire, one of which is in Leeds City. One is in Leicestershire and the remaining ten are south of a line drawn from the Wash to the Severn Estuary. Apart from the Leeds City site all the eco towns are in rural countryside, which seems a strange place to locate low carbon dwellings.

The development of any countryside anywhere in the world causes a burst of carbon to be released, as the soil is turned up, and as trees and fields where carbon dioxide is naturally sequestrated are turned over to concrete development. Overall, if eco towns are built in the countryside the net effect of the development will not be carbon neutral – quite the reverse.

The Government is pushing ahead with plans for eco towns, under their own direction, rather than permitting the control of all development of this nature to remain with local authorities who actually are usually sensitive to the needs and demands of local people. The Government expects to give final approval for ten eco towns early next year, after various “consultations”. I feel that we need local authority scrutiny, rather than consultations as well as planning enquiries for what will be major developments in the countryside.

The thirteen short listed locations are Bordon, in Hampshire, Coltishall, in Norfolk, Elsenham, in Essex, Ford, in West Sussex Hanley Grange, in Cambridgeshire Imerys, in Cornwall Leeds city region, in West Yorkshire Marston Vale, in Bedfordshire,  Middle Quinton, in Warwickshire Pennbury, in Leicestershire, Rossington, in South Yorkshire Rushcliffe, in Nottinghamshire and Weston Otmoor, in Oxfordshire

Of course in England we need more dwellings and the 10 eco towns will, if built probably provide 150,000 homes in which over half a million people will live. People do need to live somewhere, but I doubt that it is right to develop countryside to provide eco towns when there is so much land inside our towns and cities laying idle which can be provided with much less environmental damage and fewer overall carbon emissions.

Everyone who lives in one of our large towns or cities passes sites which are idle – old factories no longer used, large areas of “brown land” all of which can effectively provide excellent sites for eco homes.

When Gordon Brown was appointed Prime Minister one of the first things that he did was to announce a drive to build on brownfield land, while robustly protecting green belt land. The government itself controls over 550 sites on which 100,000 homes could be built and local authorities control sites for another 60,000 homes. Privately owned brownfield land must be capable of producing many more homes.

All these homes can be built as low carbon homes and money can be put into improving local transport services. These homes will be close to where people work; most people work in existing towns and cities, after all.

In these circumstances it makes me wonder why there is this urgent drive for eco towns on Greenfield sites before we have developed all the brownfield ones.