Bristol may become the UK's second One Planet City

Next year Bristol is to be Europe's Green Capital City (this year it is Copenhagen). A partnership of 600+ local organisations is considering using the energy generated by this to launch a proposal that Bristol adopts the target of becoming a One Planet City.

On November 24 I attended a gathering of representatives to discuss this exciting prospect, which culminated in a decision to take the proposal to the next level.

The idea for One Planet Bristol originated with the Green Capital Partnership, which has been in existence as a network for four or so years.

Chris Richards, who first came up with the idea, put it like this: "If you imagine a circle for the earth, and Bristol's 550,000 inhabitants as taking up say a fraction of a degree of their share of the earth's resources, getting their consumption down to a proportionate level would be no mean achievement.

"It would inspire others, and if it inspired Europe to do so, that is maybe 20% of that circle. The rest of the world could follow later." By drawing a simple cartoon of this concept he illustrated it perfectly and succinctly.

Herbert Girardet, co-founder of the World Future Council and author of Creating Regenerative Cities, who lives just outside the city, spoke first, giving the examples of Adelaide and Copenhagen to draw upon. "Whereas it took Copenhagen 30 years to get to where it is now, and it is by no means at the 'one planet' stage, it is taking Adelaide 10 years to achieve its targets," he said.

These targets are based on a consultation exercise Girardet carried out with the city three years ago, yielding a comprehensive set of objectives. "But even when it achieves these," he said, "it will still only have reduced its ecological footprint from four to 2.5 planets. Australians have per capita the highest average ecological footprint of any nation's citizens."

Amongst the objectives are the turning of the city's food waste into 180,000 tonnes of compost per year which is used to feed 20 hectares of local farmland that contributes to the food supply of the city. There are also targets of 1GW of solar installations, a Metro, and targets for culture, cycling and biodiversity.

Bioregional

Herbert Girardet was followed by Sue Riddlestone, from Bioregional, which is this month celebrating its 20th anniversary. Bioregional is a consultancy which helps its clients around the world reduce their ecological footprints using the one planet living schema it has evolved.

"We try to make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing," was how she summarised their design approach. This is based around ten principles, amongst which, if applied to Bristol, would be to decarbonise the energy supply by 2030, move to a closed loop resource use system, provide local food, and promote local culture and happiness.

"It would be necessary to move from a per capita emissions rate of 12 tonnes of carbon now to 1.5 tonnes by 2050," she said. She outlined Bioregional's work in Brighton, the first UK city to announce a strategy to move towards one planet living, which has two plans, one for the city and one for the council.

Darren Hall spoke next, as facilitator for the city's bid to win the European Green Capital Award for Bristol as manager of the Partnership, Darren is also the editor of local magazine Good Bristol, and a Green Party candidate.

His key message was that it is "leadership, leadership, leadership" that is required. Three years ago the Partnership submitted to the council a proposal for greening the city that met with no response, "because there was no engagement with the city council on the ideas," event organiser David Parkes said afterwards.

"This time it must be different," Hall said. "We must connect with big business, with grass roots and with the council. We won the Green City bid because we submitted a plan to accelerate green progress in the city up to 2020. We can use the energy of next year to take it further."

He described the value of the 'one planet' concept as a powerful uniting and communication tool that avoids "the tragedy of the commons" when many people pool ideas, diluting and compromising them in the process. "One planet living can be the one rule that rules them all," he said, paraphrasing Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

I also briefly outlined the work of the One Planet Council, of which I am a patron, and the experience of Wales, which has an aspiration to be a One Planet nation, and which has adopted a One Planet Development planning condition as a first step, and is now developing a Well-Being of Future Generations Bill as a next step.

Pre-requisites for a one planet city

Delegates at the meeting, of which there numbered around 50, compiled a set of pre-requisites for the process of adopting a one planet city aspiration for the city. These include:

• the need for a detailed roadmap;
• a set of independently verifiable standards or measurements;
• bringing local businesses on board with the promise of jobs and a 'green economy';
• a sustainable transport plan;
• ward by ward meetings to gather ideas and build grassroots support;
• the city council as a facilitator not as a leader;
• affordability and finance;
• knowledge of what it is within the power of the council to do;
• support from national government to help with the rest.

Above all it was felt that the banner of 'one planet living', being easy to understand, can raise the profile of the city, and give it something to aim for after its year in the European green spotlight, which would therefore provide a springboard for greater things.

Bristol's mayor is the independent, and green-minded George Ferguson. Bristol is also part of the Core Cities group in the UK, which coincidentally was also meeting yesterday with the national government's William Hague to demand more devolution of powers, including tax-raising powers. The possession of these additional powers could make the road to one planet city status slightly easier.

Another factor in its favour is that it has its own currency, the Bristol Pound, in which Ferguson takes his entire salary. This helps to boost the local economy, keeping money circulating within it.

On the other hand, Bristol is scheduled to double its population within 20 years, being a popular destination, despite being almost as expensive as London to live in. This would make the task of reducing its footprint much harder.

Perhaps they should make a willingness to adopt a 'one planet' lifestyle a condition of being allowed to move to the city.

The Green Capital Partnership will now consider the next steps to take.

The road to the One Planet Life

We only have one planet!

Just one. Obviously. But the way some people carry on you'd think we had five - in some cases even eight - wonderful blue, vibrant orbs just like planet Earth, rotating round our life-giving Sun.

Perhaps they imagine these worlds - duplicates of ours except minus human beings - are hiding on the far side of the sun. Sitting there conveniently, so that when we've used up all the resources on this planet, we can go and tap into those. How simple the future might be if we could.

We’d probably need more than one extra planet. But hey, you never know what might turn up.

As far as I know, astronomers haven't detected any more earth-like planets in the attainable vicinity.

What a shame.

Enter the concept of One Planet Living.

We crossed the one planet threshold of our global ecological footprint back in the late '60s: the amount of resources we can sustainably use.

In the 1990s the environmental group WWF developed the concept of the ecological footprint. It measures in a form that is very easy to communicate, the environmental impact of our activities compared to the number of people on the planet and the resources it contains and its ability to absorb pollution.


In the UK we use over three planet's worth of resources on average. In the United States it is much higher.

In 2002, the Beddington Zero (fossil) Energy Development, or BedZED as it is known (pictured below), was completed in south London. Designed by BioRegional for an affordable housing association with architect, Bill Dunster, the 100 home development aimed to create a whole sustainable lifestyle.

Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone are the husband and wife team behind BioRegional. They analysed BedZED, measuring its performance against its ecological footprint, which led them to come up with the term ‘One Planet Living’.

In 2009 “One Wales One Planet” was published, with a vision of putting sustainable development at the centre of government delivery, encouraging others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.

The following year the then Environment Minister for Wales, Jane Davidson (right), saw through the introduction of One Planet Developments into national planning guidance in Wales with the dry-sounding Technical Advisory Note 6: Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities.

The accompanying planning guidance also allows for one planet dwellings and communities in urban areas (though none has yet been tried).

Jane says: "I am a passionate believer in creating an effective and fair planning system that is responsive to ecological challenges and encourages innovation."

Since that time various cities or smaller developments around the world have signalled a willingness to move towards one planet living.

Bioregional operates on four continents.

Brighton in the south of England has fully declared its intention to be a one planet city and Bristol is thinking about it. I'm going to a meeting to discuss this in Bristol next week.

All of this is very exciting and it is the subject of my new book, The One Planet Life, out this month, to which both Pooran and Jane have contributed. In fact some of the above text is direct quotation from the book.



During the course of the writing of the book, together with many existing or aspiring one planet development practitioners, we have founded the One Planet Council. This exists to support all of these trends and those who want to live the one planet life. We are beginning to deliver training programs.

I believe this is the beginning of a trend. It's the thin edge of a wedge that is being driven into planning policy and thinking about the use of land, and who – or what – it is for. Because land is fundamental to the question of sustainable development, of regeneration, of the resilience of communities – the use of the land as well as its ownership.

Pooran Desai said in conversation to me recently that he believes that land speculation should be banned. It artificially drives up the price of land putting it outside of the reach of most of those who need to use it. I believe this is true. It is a fundamental injustice and incompatibility with sustainable development.

With this in mind The One Planet Life acts as a manifesto, stating the following demands and supporting them with a 15,000 word essay of evidence:

We ask:

1. That to aim towards one planet living should become an underlying principle of planning and official policy as de facto the only objectively-verifiable sustainable strategy
2. That the same set of social and environmental criteria should be used to assess all planning applications to create a level playing field
3. That these criteria, amongst others, should be informed by ecological footprint analysis which enables all projects to be compared for their environmental impact
4. That official attitudes to land use should change to help rural areas use one planet living methods to become more productive and more populated, and urban areas more green.

We make this call for the following reasons, which are substantiated in the book:
The one planet life:

1. results in more productive land use with far fewer environmental impacts
2. creates more employment than conventional agriculture
3. promotes greater physical and mental health and well-being, reducing the burden on the welfare state and health service
4. requires no taxpayer subsidies, unlike much conventional farming
5. improves the local economy, resilience and food security
6. therefore is more sustainable and gives excellent value.

Readers of this blog can obtain a 20% discount on the price of the book by going to this website and entering the code FLR40 at checkout. Tweet using the hashtag ‪#‎OnePlanetLife‬!

Jane Davidson says of it: "Throughout this book you will read how those who have embraced this lifestyle fully feel liberated by their choice: they have reconnected with nature; they understand the seasons and where food comes from and the limitations of what can/cannot be grown or reared where they live; they can offer a different, more sustainable future to their offspring. Not everyone will want to take the great leap into the unknown, but all of us can use this book to help us demonstrate the principles of one planet living in one or more parts of our lives."

Pooran Desai adds: "This thought-provoking book summarises some of the approaches which can help us on the journey - so please read, learn, practise and share. There are many already on the journey and we can, together, co-create a better future."

Some other recommendations include:

• "A wealth of practical detail" - Oliver Tickell, editor, The Ecologist magazine
• “Shows the journey to a new life.” – George Marshall
• "What it means to live a 'one-planet' lifestyle" – Prof Max Munday, Cardiff Business School.

How Sustainable is a 'Sustainable Building' in Practice?

The first major review has been published of pioneering development One Brighton's performance against its challenging 2020 One Planet targets and show where it has succeeded and where it has failed over its sustainability targets.

One Brighton is a development by Crest Nicholson BioRegional Quintain LLP in Brighton, the coastal city south of London which has set itself the goal of being a one planet city.

The One Planet Brighton policy was decided on 18 April 2013 in Brighton & Hove by the local authority. As an evolution of BioRegional's One Planet Living philosophy the local authority approved a Sustainability Action Plan that would use BioRegional's methodology and embody the city's existing initiatives and climate change strategy, to be carried out by a wide-ranging partnership.

In this context, BioRegional worked with developers Crest Nicholson to develop an example of how this might work in practice with a development called One Brighton. This contains 172 residential units and 10,000 sq ft of office and community space on a former locomotive manufacturing site. The 0.39 ha parcel of land is close to Brighton train station.

The development has achieved an ‘Excellent’ rating under EcoHomes, a now-defunct national sustainability standard assessment for new homes, and was considered to be “Zero Carbon” under this assessment. Construction started in 2008 and the first residents moved in during 2009.

A post-occupancy assessment has now been completed to see exactly how well the development has performed against expectations. Was it really zero carbon? On the answers to this type of question hinges the performance of future buildings and developers should take note.

The developers are relieved to find out that One Brighton has significantly reduced lifetime greenhouse gas emissions, when compared to the average UK home, by 60%. However, its current emissions performance is not yet achieving design targets: its ‘as built’ lifetime CO₂e emissions are 53% higher than those of the
‘as designed’ model.

The gap is mainly because of the intermittent availability of the wood-pellet (biomass) burning boiler which supplies space heating and hot water. This has met approximately 30% of building’s heat and hot water demand, the remainder being supplied by natural gas.

If BioRegional’s target of meeting nine tenths of the building’s heat demand from biomass is achieved, One Brighton’s overall lifecycle carbon savings would be 78% lower than the average UK home’s (UK per capita CO₂e emissions = 9,122 kg/yr in 2011). This would be in line with achieving the (near) Zero Carbon target for operational emissions by 2020.

But under this assessment it's a good job that the EcoHomes standard is now defunct since it was clearly erroneous in its judgement.

One Brighton's sustainability features

Right: features of the building envelope and operational inputs affecting carbon emissions.
One Brighton was designed and is managed in a way to facilitate sustainable lifestyles. Design and management initiatives include:

• Only a very small number of parking spaces for disabled car users and shared car club vehicles, encouraging low levels of car ownership and use;
• Food-growing space on rooftop terraces, facilities for taking in deliveries of ‘veg boxes’ to individual apartments and a vegetarian café;
• Recycling and waste disposal initiatives (including the on-site in-vessel composting system for green and food waste).

The construction used a ‘green concrete’ frame containing blast furnace slag and an exterior wall made up of highly insulating clay blocks fired at low temperatures. Both features helped to reduce the building’s embodied carbon emissions, which came in 25% lower than for the average UK home.

Developer Crest Nicholson BioRegional Quintain set up an energy supply company (ESCo) for One Brighton to purchase electricity entirely generated from renewable sources. All owners/tenants sign an energy supply agreement with the ESCo. All of the electricity sold by the ESCo is backed by UK ‘Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin’ (REGO) certificates issued by energy industry regulator Ofgem. This was a main plank of the near Zero Carbon strategy for the building devised at the outset.

One Brighton key lessons

The results of the one-year post-occupancy study have allowed comparison with the expected performance over its lifetime with actual performance to a limited extent. The report is honest about the conclusions, which also form recommendations for other developers attempting a similar kind of project:

• 67% of the buildings ‘as designed’ life cycle GHG emissions are attributed to embodied emissions and 33% are attributed to operational CO2e.
• Largest embodied impacts come from concrete in the floor slab, plasterboard and recurring impacts associated with painting and carpets.
• Largest operational impacts associated with energy consumption (REGO very low carbon grid electricity scenario) are due to gas backup for hot water and for the emissions associated with water supply and waste water treatment.
• Considering the model under a standard PAS2050 scenario (using UK average grid intensity) than the dominant emissions from electricity use come from appliances, cooking, white goods, refrigeration and MVHR (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery).

Pooran Desai, BioRegional ‘s cofounder who led the organisation’s involvement in One Brighton, said: “We’re really encouraged by the findings of this LCA, which shows the very low carbon fundamentals of this building are sound. But we are working to get greatly improved performance from the biomass boiler, to reduce operational emissions significantly and take us to our 2020 target.”

The life cycle analysis was conducted by eTool, whose director, Patrick Hermon, observed: "An LCA never fails to raise interesting design questions surrounding not only material selection but operational energy, water, transport, waste and functionality. This LCA of One Brighton is no exception, particularly thanks to the transparency of the developers and post occupancy monitoring - an important step forwards in closing the performance gap.

"The LCA will also be compliant with international standard EN15978. This methodology (also broadly used in BREEAM LCA credit criteria) standardises the LCA process and verifies the environmental performance benefits claimed within the LCA given the upstream data used, the methodologies applied and the documentation provided. A complete EN15978 report will be completed very soon."

It concentrates mainly on factors associated with the building itself, including materials, assembly, maintenance, transport of materials, operational energy use and end of life disposal. But there are other factors that would significantly influence the total LCA CO₂e emissions of the designs, to which the developers should take at least some responsibility, including:

• Personal transport of the occupants;
• Impacts associated with foods, goods and services (purchases made by residents, clothes leisure activities etc);
• Impacts associated with occupant waste and recycling;
• Embodied impacts of non permanent building fixtures such as furniture and appliances;
• Embodied impacts relating to building planning and sales.

These factors listed are considered out of scope of the LCA but nevertheless warrant declaration.

The main conclusion in general terms is that developers should beware of declaring that a development is zero carbon, and that there continue to be difficulties in achieving anything like this in practice. All credit to the developers in this instance to taking the trouble to examine their building's performance. If only more developers were to do the same.