Peterborough - already one of just four Environment Cities in the UK - is aiming to become the nation's environment capital.
Environment capital
Peterborough – already one of just four Environment Cities in the UK – is aiming
to become the nation’s environment capital.
The Greater Peterborough
Partnership (GPP), which brings together all the major public and private
sector organisations in the city, has published an Environment Capital Manifesto which sets out ambitious goals
that we must reach if we are secure the Environment Capital title.
The whole city is working together to hit tough new targets in areas such as:
- Reducing Peterborough’s use of natural resources – increasing recycling, cutting
waste sent to landfill and reducing water use.
- Making this the UK’s greenest city – maintaining natural habitats and providing
everyone with access to natural green space.
- Creating one of the UK’s leading sustainable built environments – cutting energy
use, requiring new buildings to meet targets for renewable energy use and ensuring
new housing meets high standards for sustainability.
- Becoming the city with the highest proportion of citizens using sustainable transport
– cutting the use of the private car.
- Educating Peterborough’s people and businesses to make them the most environmentally
aware in the UK – securing pledges of environmental action.
- Making Peterborough the natural choice for green businesses - maintaining the city
as the UK’s principal centre for environmental technology and research and getting
city businesses to invest in the environment.
An Environment Capital Partnership has been created to lead
the work of achieving Peterborough’s Environment Capital aspiration.
The city’s business community has committed itself to support the Environment Capital
Manifesto. Businesses of all sizes and across all sectors of industry and commerce
are taking action to back the manifesto. At a conference early in 2008 around 90
representatives of companies and green agencies from Peterborough agreed a series
of new measures to speed up progress to secure the Environment Capital title.
The government’s national regeneration agency, English Partnerships, is backing
the Environment Capital Manifesto. It has selected a site at South Bank Phase 1
(Glebe Road) as only the country’s second zero carbon community in its Carbon Challenge. House builders are competing to build
450 zero carbon homes in a demonstration that using cutting-edge design and technology
makes such development economically viable on a commercial scale.
Nearby, plans for a ‘green quarter’ as part of the redevelopment of the area around
the railway station are taking shape. Shops and offices will be built to the highest
environmental standards to provide a home for some of the many environmental companies
and organisations in the city.
Peterborough's
cluster of environmental firms is already the largest in the UK. The cluster
employs more than 4,500 people and accounts for over five per cent of the city's
GDP, selling its products and services worldwide.
The members of the cluster range from public sector agencies providing the government
with policy advice to firms actively engaged in waste recycling. There are companies
developing and using world-leading technologies and consultancies selling their
expertise throughout the world.
The city’s expertise in environmental technologies – and its ability to expand its
environmental cluster – have been recognised by government at both regional and
national level.
The city received another boost to its green aspirations early in 2008 when an eco-innovation
centre – a ‘nursery’ for growing firms in the environment sector – opened at Peterscourt,
in City Road.
The premises were previously the offices of Opportunity Peterborough. We moved out
so that the centre could get started more swiftly than would have been possible
if it had needed to wait for purpose-built accommodation. However, the organisations
behind the eco-innovation centre are already planning a ‘phase 2’ of the project
which includes a move to new premises.
Opportunity Peterborough is playing a key role in delivering the Environment Capital
Manifesto. Our
Integrated Growth Strategy – a blueprint for the future of the city – was
the first such planning exercise in the UK to fully integrate sustainability issues
with spatial planning.
The city's environmental credentials are already being widely recognised. Peterborough
was recently named by website
www.locallife.co.uk as the second greenest place in the UK. It was beaten
to the top place in the table of 324 UK cities and towns by the city of Norwich
only because Norwich has more Green Party councillors!
Sustainability is not just part of our plan –
it is at the heart of our plan.