Five years on

In our regular critical review, Hannah Bullock revisits stories we identified as interesting back in 2000 – and checks where they’re going now.

Earth to earth...

The Earth Centre opened in 1999 with multimedia exhibitions, organic food, groundbreaking green architecture, and the mission of showing the public “sustainability in practice” – in the setting of a huge country park [see ‘The difference a day makes’, GF24]. By autumn 2004 it was in administration, the land handed back to Doncaster Council.

What went wrong? Location, location, location? Doncaster’s not in the same league as London – or Cornwall – as a tourist magnet, but the rundown coal mining area was earmarked for regeneration funding from the European Union. And, as the Earth Centre’s former chief executive Jonathan Smales asks pointedly, “where else would you find 400 acres and three rivers in an area of special scientific interest that we could use?”

But the Earth Centre ultimately got only a third of the £150 million it needed to realise the vision and market the attraction properly, Smales tells us. Squabbles over funding with the Millennium Commission somewhat undermined the project, he admits, while the rest of the money came in dribs and drabs from 12 partners with different criteria for spending it.

The building designed to be the Earth Centre’s star attraction, a solar-panel-covered ‘Arc’ which, on paper, looked very like the Eden Project’s biomes, never got built – they couldn’t get the required £40 million all in one pot. The fact that ‘sustainable development’ didn’t tick the funding boxes suggests that the Earth Centre was ahead of its time. “We’re talking 15 years ago here, long before it came on to the government agenda,” reminds Smales.

As for the general public, perhaps the slogan “living on the planet as if we intended to stay” was a little heavy for the average day-tripper. “But if sustainable development is about transformation, then the Earth Centre was that,” says Smales. It got a diverse group of people working together, including ex-coal miners, scientists, campaigners and international designers. Its rigorous sustainability criteria for supplies, from brick to soil, fridges to energy, made it “probably the biggest example of sustainable procurement in the country”, Smales reckons. And there’s a lasting legacy in the transformation of a bleak, toxic wasteland into a verdant park, where some of the 200,000 trees planted are now 30 metres tall. Wait and see how Doncaster Council uses this resource.
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council,
01302 734444

Solar rules OK

Sunny Barcelona’s ‘solar thermal ordinance’ in 2000 made water-heating solar panels compulsory on almost all the city’s new and refurbished buildings. It was hoped that 50,000 square metres of panels would be glinting on the roofs by 2004 [ ‘Place in the sun for thermal solar’, GF24]. Today, around 25,000 square metres of panels capture the sun’s heat or are waiting to be installed on a building.

It’s a striking 14-fold increase since the ordinance was passed – but only halfway to the target. One of the problems was that the solar thermal obligation applies only to proprietors who could get 60% of their hot water that way – exempting, for instance, many huge hotels which use an awful lot of hot water but don’t have roof space for enough panels to heat 60% of it. Only a quarter of the city’s solar thermal projects are on hotels. Most of them are on private dwellings. Now, however, the ordinance is being rewritten with a much lower percentage threshold.

Which should make the 2010 target – 98,000 square metres – more realistic. Numbers aside, Barcelona’s initiative – a first for Spanish municipal law – has inspired similar laws in 35 cities across the country, including Madrid and Seville. A forthcoming national building code will make it compulsory for all new buildings to have at least some solar panels – and local authorities will be key in deciding just how far their cities should step up the heat.
Barcelona Energy Agency, +34 932 374 743,
www.barcelonaenergia.com/eng/observatory/ost/ost.htm

Falkland farms

They hoped to go boldly where no island had gone before. But the Falklands have found it harder than expected to make a complete switch to organic farming [ ‘Falklands to go all organic?’, GF24]. Only two of its 88 sheep farms are currently part of the Falkland Islands Organic Certification Scheme. Although few of the sheep farms used artificial pesticides anyway, the Islands’ director of agriculture Phyl Rendell says the scheme has proved to be a heavy bureaucratic burden for farmers, for little gain.

“My husband gained an organic certificate for his farm, but no longer has it because he would have to reapply and the process is too onerous.” After the Falkland Islands Development Corporation (FIDC) dropped the premium on organic produce, farmers had little incentive to put in the extra effort, she says. Another blow to the scheme was the sudden shift from wool production to more profitable meat, marked by the opening of an abattoir.

Organic lamb might sound like an ideal enterprise, but the embryo transfer and artificial insemination scheme, set up by Rendell’s department to produce sheep plump enough for meat, involves using hormones that aren’t permitted under organic standards. It could take 10 years to work this through the generations so that the whole herd is mixed wool/meat stock complying with organic standards, thinks Rendell. Yet she’s encouraged by the interest of local farmers in developing a Falklands eco-label.

After all, it’s a rare breed of farmer that spreads calcified seaweed fertiliser on crops, uses the ‘hoof and tooth’ of grazing livestock to condition the soil, and gives each sheep four hectares to roam. – Jessica Davies
Falkland Islands Government, www.falklands.gov.uk
Falkland Islands Development Corporation, +500 27211

Carwash

Five years ago Bill Ford Jnr was full of plans to make his motor company take environmental issues seriously. His mission, as he told us in a Green Futures interview [ ‘Any colour you like... as long as it’s green?’, GF24], was to transform Ford from a car maker to a mobility services company. Targets to “deliver tangible stuff” included getting hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road within four years, and improving the fuel economy of Ford sports utility vehicles (SUVs) by 25% within five.

Pretty soon the hardheaded accountants were putting the damper on any missionary zeal that didn’t square with market share. Bill’s enthusiasms might be OK at the symbolic level – and, five years on, Ford can lay claim to producing the world’s first hybrid SUV. The petrol-electric Ford Escape Hybrid does 35-40 mpg.

But, with its regular ‘sports utes’ doing as little as 10 mpg, the company thought it wise to acknowledge two years ago that it wouldn’t hit that 25% target. Around the same time, an independent study of the world’s top 10 car manufacturers [‘Cars, climate and competitiveness’, GF44] showed up Ford’s heavy reliance on profits from high-emitting vehicles, leaving it very badly placed to benefit from future carbon reduction policies.

Ford’s own analysis of the business impact of anticipated climate change policy is due at the end of this year, along with an ‘environmental impact assessment’ of its products and manufacturing facilities. As for the fuel cells, there are 20 or so Ford Focuses powered by hydrogen on the roads today. Not actually on sale, but still being tested by fleet customers.

And Ford the company isn’t as confident as Ford the man once sounded, that hydrogen fuel is on the near horizon: “We see hydrogen fuel cell technology as a promising long-term mobility solution,” said a spokesman. In the shorter term, the company is pursuing various other technologies, including versions of the internal combustion engine that burn hydrogen, ‘clean’ diesel or bioethanol. About to make their debut as fleet cars in Somerset are 40 Focus Flexi-Fuel Vehicles running on 85% locally grown biofuel.
Ford Corporate Citizenship Report,
www.ford.com/en/company/about/corporateCitizenship
+49 221 90 19929

21 September 2005

Hannah Bullock