Combined heat and power, water recycling, passive solar, sustainable materials audits, community intranet. It all sounds like a project dreamt up by the Centre for Alternative Technology. Yet these are some of the bullet points used to promote Greenwich Millennium Village (GMV) at its launch to homebuyers at the end of March.
Last year, the developers Countryside and Taywood, were accused of watering down the original green credentials of the scheme in a bitter public row. Yet at the launch the developers remained adamant that they hadn’t changed course and that they had remained true to the terms of the offer with which they won the bid to develop 1377 homes on this corner of the Greenwich peninsula, ten minutes walk from the Millennium Dome.
The basis of their winning bid was a series of Egan-inspired innovation targets which have been used to address all aspects of the design and construction of the village. While critics will cry that these targets are too tame, nothing on this scale has been undertaken in the UK before by a private developer.
Innovation targets
In the competition winning proposal the innovations were presented as a series of targets to be achieved over the lifetime of the development. These were: Primary energy use - reduce by 80% Embodied energy - reduce by 50% Water consumption - reduce by 30% Construction cost - reduce by 30%Power
The most radical innovation seen at GMV is the use of combined heat and power (CHP). Instead of each house or flat having its own boiler, there will be a series of small plants to provide all the hot water and most of the electricity for up to 120 homes plus a few shops and workplaces. It makes sense because of the relatively high site density and as a mixed use development there can be daytime usage of the power generated. CHP promises significant savings because the plants produce electricity in addition to hot water. Energy efficiency measures should ensure the ratios of hot water to electricity produced closely match consumption. The CHP plants will initially be on mains gas as the greener option of burning biomass fuels, such as willow, are considered impractical, at least in the short term. Reducing electricity consumption is a key aim with lighting and electrical appliances considered to be the hardest areas to tackle. Low wattage lighting is installed in the show flats and care is being taken to specify low energy consuming white goods. Surprisingly, the insulation standards have only been marginally increased on current standards.Water
Water consumption is another area receiving attention. The ultra-green option is to go for grey water recycling - using bath water to flush toilets. The development team is reluctant to fully embrace grey water because they feel that the technology is unproven and that there remains a lack of adequate standards. In the initial phases of the development, the emphasis will be on installing water efficient taps and appliances; but to get a full 30% reduction in average water consumption, a grey water scheme is being developed with Thames Water which will form part of Phase 2. This will be a district grey water plant serving 50 dwellings. Plans are also under way to collect rainwater, though this will be used to irrigate plants rather than in the home.IT infrastructure
All 1377 homes will be wired into an IT network: this is qualitatively different to the growing number of high-tech homes now coming onto the open market because, not only is a structured cabling backbone being wired into each house, but the houses are then linked into a village website and information centre. Architect Ralph Erskine’s master plan has always been to build a community and the intention is to allow this community to grow electronically as well as by face-to-face contact. Whether the virtual community develops as intended is open to doubt. The obvious role for a village-wide intranet is Neighbourhood Watch. With no provision for private parking, cars will be left in communal areas at the edge of the village. They will be watched over by CCTV cameras whose output will be available to all village residents on their TVs. Snooping may not have been an aspect of English village life that Erskine wanted to recreate but it should at least keep the villagers on their best behaviour when out in public, as unseen neighbours look on through their intranet curtains. 1 Digital signals sent as binary code - a series of 0s and 1s. 1a Satellite broadcast 1b Terrestrial broadcast 1c Cable broadcast 2 To receive the signal a set-top box will be needed to decode the digital signal 3&4 Interactive television - shop, do business, browse the internet using remote controlSource
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