Blues go green

Man City to generate own powerMove over Beijing 2008, hello east Manchester – where Manchester City are set to switch their stadium over to wind power early next season. The city council gave the go-ahead for a huge 85-metre turbine just next to the stadium last autumn. By October it should be up and running – just like in the photomontage right.

Designed by Sir Norman Foster, the elegant giant is part of a ‘merchant wind power’ scheme with Ecotricity whereby the renewable energy company puts up a turbine on the club’s site at SportCity, and provides electricity to the club at a lower cost than a conventional supply. Total output is reckoned at 4.1 million kWh a year, and any power that’s surplus to the needs of all those lights, plasma screens and scoreboards, will go into the grid.

The turbine is a logical next step for a football club that’s carving out a green image for itself. SportCity already recycles its paper, card, glass and plastic and has reduced what it sends to landfill by almost half over the last three years. Now the MCFC social responsibility manager, Pete Bradshaw, is getting excited about water. He hopes to be working together with the club’s ‘neighbours’, which should soon include the city’s supercasino as well as the council and several large retailers, on a giant reservoir to collect rainwater for the toilets – and to water all that grass… – Hannah Bullock

10 March 2007

Hannah Bullock