Eco-island fights back

Planning, 5 September 2008

It is famed as a Mecca for yachters, a magnet for pensioners and the venue for a legendary Jimi Hendrix performance, but the Isle of Wight has done little to earn itself a reputation as an environmental trailblazer. That could all be about to change as Isle of Wight Council begins to put into action a bold plan to establish the island as a national leader in green living.

Under the banner of becoming an "eco-island", the council has pledged to secure the lowest carbon footprint of any English local authority area by 2020. "Our carbon footprint currently is a lot higher than we would want it to be," says council leader David Pugh. "It is a hugely ambitious target that we are aiming for, but we like to set our sights high."

Pugh is right on the mark in calling the target ambitious. According to council sustainability officer Jim Fawcett, the island's current carbon footprint ranks among the highest in the local authority league. "Out of more than 400 councils, we are in the high 300s," he says. "As things stand, we are way down at the wrong end."

Starting from such a low base, there is clearly a long way to go. In conjunction with business advisory body the Carbon Trust, the unitary authority has drawn up a carbon management plan through which it hopes to contribute to the 2020 target by slashing its own carbon emissions by 60 per cent over the next 15 years.

But the real task in meeting the 2020 goal lies beyond the council's control, across the island at large. "When you look at the various elements of the footprint, we are about average on the commercial and industrial side," says Fawcett. "On the transport side we are slightly under average. But we have a fairly ageing housing stock and it is in relatively poor condition thermally. This is what is holding us back."

Initially, the council is planning to tackle this through an island-wide programme of household insulation. But in addition to short-term measures, it is looking to incorporate sustainability into long-term planning through its local development framework (LDF). Currently under preparation, the "island plan" will set out spatial development policies up until 2026.

"The work we are doing on the island plan explicitly links to the eco-island vision," explains planning policy manager Wendy Perera. "While a lot of the eco-island focus will be about behavioural change and areas such as home insulation, how we take the principles forward also needs to be considered. This is best done through the island plan."

When the plan is launched next year, one key policy will require new homes built on the island to achieve at least level 4 of the code for sustainable homes, moving up to level 5 by 2012 and level 6 by 2016. "We want to move forward with code level 4 now rather than wait for national legislation," Perera adds.

Carbon manifesto to set green standards

To enshrine environmentally sensitive design into the island's planning system, the council has drafted in the renowned architect and planner Sir Terry Farrell to act as its champion. Farrell is now working on a low-carbon manifesto that will function as a design code sitting alongside the island plan to ensure that all future development is built to high green standards.

Another central plank of the Isle of Wight's environmental ambitions is to promote the use of renewable energy. The area provides great potential for wind and tidal power and the council hopes to exploit both. It has set an initial target to develop 65MW of renewable energy production capacity by 2015. "Renewables give us confidence talking about having the lowest carbon footprint," Fawcett says. "We have a lot more scope here than other people."

Like many other planning authorities, the isle is looking to introduce a Merton-type policy requiring new developments to incorporate certain levels of renewable energy provision through its LDF. According to Perera, the main focus for this will be on-site rather than off-site sources. The council is likely to opt for a sliding scale target demanding gradually increasing proportions of renewables as new technologies become available over time.

"Part of our renewables policy will be about setting thresholds for the types of developments from which we would be expecting to see primarily on-site provision coming forward," she says. "Over the longer term it is likely to be something that we see as a matter of course brought into every type of development."

Beyond individual developments, the authority is hoping that as the technology becomes more viable, the island's considerable wind and tidal resources can be exploited to generate power for general consumption. At the moment, tapping into the strong ocean currents around the island remains an intention rather than a working proposition. Wind energy is a far more realistic short-term option - were it not for the Isle of Wight's powerful anti-wind lobby.

Last year, the council rejected proposals for a six-turbine wind farm near the village of Wellow. According to the Footprint Trust, an environmental body based on the island, this was largely the result of lobbying by Thwart, a body set up to oppose wind farms there. "It got a campaign going and scared people because they feared that house prices would plummet, birds would be mashed up by the thousands and tourism would crash," says trust manager Ray Harrington-Vail.

Since then another company, Cornwall Light and Power (CEL), has revived proposals for a wind farm at Cheverton Down in the Wight area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). CEL has made a fresh application involving three 150m wind turbines that would be three times the height of those for which it already has planning permission at the site.

Again, it seems likely that the proposals will be the subject of a fierce local battle. Thwart campaigner Robin Laird says the body will oppose the proposals on the grounds that given their potential impact on the landscape, they have not been subjected to proper environmental scrutiny. "The previous permission slipped through without an environmental impact assessment," says Laird. "This is right in the heart of the AONB and should definitely have one. Our objections to this application are the same as the last one."

Turbine win hangs on climate change view

But Harrington-Vail maintains that the next time round, the case for turbines will be much harder for the council to resist. "The last campaign was alarmist and it worked," he says. "But we now have a change in politics on the island that is reflected in the rest of the country and across the world. When the last application went in about three years ago, people were still questioning climate change. One now has to be a total cynic not to believe that something is happening. I do not foresee as much opposition to this one. People are better informed now."

Pugh hints that the authority may not be prepared to give in so easily to Thwart's lobbying when it considers the revised scheme. "We are looking at tidal and solar options and so on, but we cannot avoid onshore turbines," he argues. "There are a number of challenges here, one being the AONB, and we need to look sensitively at where turbines go. Some difficult decisions will have to be taken, but they are issues that we need to face up to."

Despite the pending clash over the wind farm, Pugh is upbeat about the island's prospect for meeting the 2020 goal. Given the behavioural change that the target is set to require, he has been particularly heartened by the public's receptiveness. "In many ways, the issue has not been about winning the public over but about us being won over to their cause. It has very much been led from the grass roots," he says. "People all across the island have been engaged in eco-initiatives for years. So the debate is not about whether we go green, it is about how we do it."

LOW-CARBON TARGETS
2009: Publish Sir Terry Farrell's low-carbon design manifesto for the
island.
2009: Install renewable energy systems in three community buildings.
2010: Increase cycling by 300 per cent over 2000 levels.
2011: Build a new low-energy eco-school in Cowes.
2012: Convert all council vehicles to run on biofuels.
2015: Develop 65MW renewable energy production capacity, rising to 100MW
by 2020.
2016: Ensure that all new homes are built to level 6 of the code for
sustainable homes.
2020: Secure lowest carbon footprint in England.
2022: Cut council carbon emissions by 60 per cent.