At Battersea, London’s Chance To Be Bold on Green

Lagging so far behind the rest of Europe in delivering green energy, the UK needs to make a bold statement. Two recent developments have collided to make that more likely.

First came the government's ambitious programme to up the production of renewable energy. It will require generating a third of the country’s energy from green sources by 2020 and a massive expansion of offshore wind power projects.

Second came plans to turn London’s iconic Battersea Power Station, immortalised by Pink Floyd, into what developers claim is the UK’s largest ever sustainable development project.

The power station was a major contributor to the capital’s appalling air quality in the 20th century, including the great London smog of 1952, which scientists believe may have killed as many as 12,000 people.

The developers plan to place a low-energy-using office complex alongside Battersea Power Station – along with futuristic chimney and ecodome. And they want the plant to emerge from its dirty past as a green energy powerhouse – burning biomass and other waste to generate electricity.

What a fantastic symbol – the promise of renewable energy rising up through the shell of our coal-fired past and giving a new life to the defunct industrial zone in sustainable work space and housing. But skeptics have thrown cold water on the bold idea.

Residents fed up with a series of schemes for the site – from a theme park in the 1980s to a housing and entertainment complex more recently – have written to local media saying the building, which is protected under conservation rules, should be pulled down and a new project started from scratch.

Groups in favour of preserving the building have not been wholly supportive of the new plans, fearing the developers would pull down the power station’s characteristic chimneys.

Meanwhile commentators such as Richard Morrison writing in The Times see it as a pie-in-the-sky project that will never be delivered.

The city’s new “anti-skyscraper” mayor Boris Johnson looks set to oppose the scheme, after proposing new rules to keep tall buildings within designated zones. The planned 300-metre chimney for the eco dome in largely low-rise Battersea is likely to fall foul of new regulations.

The capital needs a showcase eco scheme more than ever given the uncertain future of the London Array windfarm project, after major backer Shell pulled out in May .

While the developers must be closely scrutinised to deliver on their green promises, an environmentally sensitive development that brings renewable energy production to the capital is the best way to revive the old site and for London to mark its commitment to an ecologically sound future.

While the Battersea plans have been greeted with scepticism, the government’s renewable energy strategy have been cautiously welcomed .

But it’s going to take steely determination from the government to make unpopular decisions for the country to start weaning itself off fossil fuels.

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