Rob Shaw from Faber Maunsell offers practical advice on moving towards a low carbon future.

2008 is set to see the global climate take another record battering. Greenhouse gas emissions will be the highest ever and their growth shows no sign of slowing. It is also likely to be a year where the effects are felt more than ever before. Most people will know by now that this means more unpredictable weather patterns. The floods experienced in the UK were mirrored by droughts and mind melting temperatures in other parts of Europe and the world.

So while emissions grow at the global scale, local communities around the world start to suffer. Logically then, responses should happen at the scale most likely to be effective. And so they are… albeit slowly. In England the drivers have been three-fold: the climate challenge, the need for more housing, and concerns about fuel poverty and security. The responses at national level include:

• A probable and legally binding commitment to reducing CO₂ emissions by 80 per cent against 1990 levels by 2050 (I say probable because the Government is considering raising the current commitment of a 60 per cent reduction to 80 per cent, to be delivered through the forthcoming climate change act)
• Building regulations to require zero carbon new homes by 2016, zero carbon schools by 2016 and an ambition to get to zero carbon new non-domestic buildings by 2019.
• Both of these supported by a programme of 10 new towns, known as eco-towns, to house at least 50,000 households in zero carbon communities by 2020.   

This is arguably the most challenging ‘to do’ list imaginable and places the UK firmly at the top of the climate adrenalin junky league. And it is at the local level that some of the biggest and most exciting opportunities present themselves. Two pieces of guidance have been published recently that will help local authorities rise to the challenges. The first is the working draft practice guidance, prepared by Faber Maunsell and ERM, to support December’s ground-breaking supplement to PPS1 on Planning and Climate Change[1]. This sets out how, through policy and decision-making, planning can address the need to reduce climate change emissions, adapt to the impacts and promote low-carbon energy generation at the local scale.

The second is a collaboration between the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and Combined Heat and Power Association (CHPA)[2]. This supports the practice guide by focusing on how local government can work with strategic partners and use planning and enabling mechanisms to deliver low-carbon local energy. Used together, the guides provide local authorities with the framework and tools necessary to take a serious shot at delivering the local share of this agenda. Key principles are:

• That planning and development should contribute to an overall reduction in CO₂ emissions.
• That plan-making and development should maximise opportunities for decentralised renewable and low carbon energy.
• That different mixes of technologies and energy infrastructure are suited to particular locations within an urban area.
• Climate change mitigation and adaptation should be considered together, but that responses to each may differ.
• Sustainability Appraisal should shape policies and plans.
• Regional and local planning bodies should develop indicators for monitoring and review.

This means that planners, master planners and developers should take account of a range of inter-related factors, including:

• Generators of traffic and areas with good accessibility.
• Opportunities for sustainable energy.
• Use of regional renewable targets and local decentralised and renewable or low carbon energy targets.
• Use of land practices that provide carbons sinks.
• Avoiding vulnerable areas and bringing forward adaptation options.
• Availability of water resources.

There are four basic requirements for successful local climate change policy or master planning (Figure 1). First is to know why you are doing it by setting clear, challenging but deliverable objectives. In the case of transport[3] this could be to achieve a modal split in favour of walking, cycling and public transport. Second, we need to develop a clear understanding of baselines, such as regional or local CO₂ emissions or vulnerabilities to climatic risks. Third, is to know where we are going and should involve using baseline information to set targets and trajectories, for example to reduce CO₂ emissions. Finally, we need to match policies and targets to delivery. Planners, local authorities and their strategic partners have a vital role to play in determining what is deliverable and thereby shaping local opportunities through forward planning.

Figure 1 – Addressing Climate Change Through Policy-Making

 

 

 

At the local level, a key focus of the PPS and the working draft practice guide to support it, and the principal issue for the Community Energy Guide is energy. This is, therefore, an appropriate area to demonstrate how it could work in practice.

It is understandable to assume that if the building regulations demand zero carbon buildings by 2019 then planning and wider development has little or no role in energy. However, closer inspection reveals some problems. The regulations deal only with a building’s ‘regulated emissions’: those emissions associated with heating, lighting and hot water. The zero carbon definition includes ‘unregulated emissions’: regulated emissions plus those associated with appliances and these account for around 40 per cent of the total. Meeting these targets through energy efficiency and building integrated energy generation technologies alone is likely to be hugely expensive and in many urban areas impractical. It is clear therefore that we need to look beyond the building and even the site. Hence why planning is so important.

The aim needs to be to use planning policy and development to promote decentralised and renewable or low-carbon energy generation and infrastructure. This phrase brings together renewable and low-carbon technologies that are located on-site and near-site[4]. It also introduces planners and developers to the need to consider the supply infrastructure.

Most UK energy comes from centralised and generally fossil-fuelled power stations whereby a large proportion of the energy produced is lost as waste heat (through cooling towers). Decentralised energy allows smaller power units to be located within towns, close to the populations they serve, and enables use to be made of the heat in the form of district heating. The energy generated becomes more efficient and the plants powered by a mix of lower carbon and renewable fuels, including gas and biomass.

For a nation that has become used to centrally planned and cheap energy this may seem alien. In fact, local energy planning, with local government at the helm, was the norm in years gone by. For instance, the Bloom Street combined heat and power (CHP) station was opened by the public sector Manchester Corporation in 1898 to meet soaring energy demand.

In terms of local energy and with the aim of meeting regional or locally set CO₂ reduction targets, this can be achieved by gaining an understanding of local energy needs and opportunities. Planning is an ideal mechanism for this. Sites can be identified in development plans that are suited to renewable or low carbon generation. Using the Local Development Framework’s (LDF) proposals map or Site Specific Allocation Development Plan Document (DPD), for example, sites could be included that have a favourable wind resource or that are close to an existing or proposed power plant or other energy opportunities. Reaching this endpoint requires plans and masterplans to consider three broad components:

1.      Gaining an understanding of local feasibility for different energy sources
This depends on factors such as scale of development, its density and location. In assessing an area’s potential planners will need to map constraints and opportunities for energy efficiencies, supply and generation. It will need to do this across the existing stock. It should identify existing sources of low carbon energy and the potential from new development. It will also need to consider committed and potential development sites and planned low carbon or renewable energy sources. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping can be used to build up a local picture and to identify strategies for supplying the existing stock, new development and remaining need. Denmark has many years experience in doing this and should be studied by anyone embarking on this exercise. 
 

2.      Once the potential has been assessed, use this knowledge to set targets
Targets for decentralised low-carbon and/or renewable energy generation should be set the context of wider CO₂ reduction targets and any regional energy targets, for example through a policy in the Core Strategy. They should relate to the local authority as a whole and be justified in planning terms, i.e. be deliverable based on the opportunities identified in stage 1. There are likely to be some sites within a local authority’s area with potential for higher targets. These are acceptable so long as they are evidence based and are site or location specific. They could be set out in an Area Action Plan or Site Specific DPD. This is what CLG are terming Merton+, i.e. an area-wide target plus development area or site specific targets. In both cases planners need to consider technologies and approaches that are renewable and low-carbon and on-site and near site (decentralised).

3.      Create local area energy networks
Energy technologies are evolving rapidly, solar photovoltaics for example are reducing in cost at a rapid pace. It is not always desirable, therefore, to refer to specific technologies in plans that may become quickly dated. As such, it may be beneficial to focus local authority policy-making and action on creating local energy distribution infrastructure for heat and power as well as promoting the technologies themselves.

Local authorities can take a lead, supported by Energy Service Companies (ESCo) or other public/private partnerships, by creating heat and power networks. Initially this could involve connecting up council owned building stock and existing or planned networks. Woking Borough Council is the best example to date of how this can work. To support this, and in potentially two of the PPS’s most far-reaching paragraphs[5], it makes it clear that local authorities can use planning policy to require commercial developments to connect to emerging networks.

Figure 2 – A Local Authority-Wide Strategic Approach to Energy

 

It is clear that huge opportunities exist for local action. However, planning alone will not be sufficient and should be supported by action across local strategic partners and make use of available enabling mechanisms. Figure 1 shows how local authorities can co-ordinate action and describes in more detail what some of the local opportunities are and how they can be applied at different spatial scales in a hypothetical city. Of course, energy is only one part of the climate change challenge, but similar approaches can be used whether we are addressing transport, housing, retail and so on.

This agenda poses planners and local government with challenges that go far beyond simply inserting a new policy on climate change or one on energy into a Regional Spatial Strategy, Local Development Document or Sustainable Communities Strategy. It requires a fundamental refocusing of policy and decision-making towards the achievement of climate change objectives. Tough targets like zero carbon buildings will need to be supported by planning. Therefore, forward planning should be creating the conditions for achieving very low and zero carbon communities by shaping and promoting cost effective decentralised energy supply opportunities. It sounds daunting, but with these guides and a growing level of expertise within local authorities and support from consultancies, it could provide the opportunity to reinvigorate local government.

Robert Shaw is an Associate Director at Faber Maunsell

The views expressed in this article are his own.

 

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E. robert.shaw@fabermaunsell.com