Greater Cambridge Local Plan Issues & Options 2020
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Farmland and villages
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Mixture, mostly greenfield
The Hardwick Climate Action group is a community organisation aiming to support the residents of Hardwick to reduce their carbon footprint to zero s soon as possible. Beyond individual actions such as changing diet and modes of transport, various village schemes have been identified as ways to reduce CO2 emissions: growing food locally, planting more trees and village-sized sustainable energy production such as wind turbines and ground source heat pump. Unfortunately all these schemes require land and the village has none to spare. Yet Hardwick lies on the edge of a green space that has all the land we and other villages, and even Cambridge city itself, would need to support all of these schemes. This is of course the green belt. Although originally intended as a planning method for containing the growth of Cambridge, it is now a potentially vital source of land that should be devoted to sustainable schemes that can quickly and efficiently reduce the whole of Cambridgeshire's carbon footprint. All that's needed is to create a planning policy that use of the greenbelt land can only be changed if it's to support sustainable uses, such as woodlands, flood storage, local food production and sustainable energy schemes. Current land owners might also be offered incentives to invest in these schemes, or to sell plots to local Councils who can then make the land available to communities to create their own schemes. The first step to reach zero carbon emissions before 2050 is to allocate local land resources, and the greenbelt is ideal.
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Reduce Cambridgeshire's CO2 emissions to zero, improve community spirit, diets, lifestyles and happiness.
Existing structures shouldn't impede the sustainability schemes.
Various farm tracks and roads
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These utilities would either have no impact or could be avoided.
Small amounts of water might be needed for village food production. Connection to electrical utilities would be needed for any sustainable electricity generating schemes such as wind turbines. Underground piping might be needed for any ground source heat pumps.
Current land owners would need to be encouraged to change land use in favour of sustainable schemes, or land purchased by Councils.
Land subject to such constraints could be avoided in the near term.
2023
2033
10
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Sustainable energy schemes: A village the size of Hardwick (3000 residents) would require about 5 wind turbines at a cost of £7 million, about £7000 per household. A few hectares of land would be required to site them, but the land between each turbine could still be used for other sustainable schemes. Woodland schemes: Woodland has about 2000 trees per ha, each tree is worth about 1 tonne of CO2 equivalent over a 40 year lifetime. A village the size of Hardwick would require about 5000 trees per year to offset its current emissions, equivalent to a 100 ha woodland over 40 years. Local food schemes: Typical vegetable yields are about 100 tons per ha, enough for about 25 people, so a village of 3000 residents require about 120 ha.
The intent is that the scheme provider (farmer or local community group) would be responsible for ongoing maintenance. Maintenance of sustainable energy schemes is usually provided by the manufacturer as part of the purchase agreement.
Various sources of funding are possible, ranging from self-funded by individual contributions/investments to commercial loans and government grants/subsidies.
The take-up of developing schemes for each village and the city would vary but once the planning policy is confirmed and the first few schemes have started, take-up will accelerate, hence 10 years might be optimistic but is achievable.
A combined proposal from the city and villages in close proximity to the green belt requires more time to organise than is available by your deadline.
Aside from individual changes of behaviour, such as using zero-carbon modes of transport or changing diet, CO2 reducing schemes such as growing local food or trees in woodland, sustainable energy production via ground source heat pumps, solar farms, wind turbines, all require land. The city of Cambridge and surrounding villages may be surrounded by rural land but they have no access to any land where these schemes can be implemented. The Council's first step must be to gain authority to stipulate that certain zones can only change their use if that use is for CO2-reducing schemes. An obvious and convenient zone to apply this to would be the green belt, since the more local the scheme is, the more efficient it will be in terms of reducing CO2, plus having more food farms and woodlands nearby will increase the health and well-being of the residents of the city and surrounding villages.
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Each new house is a further drain on the water table. The obvious way to protect water resources is to not build more houses. Central government has finally recognised that other areas need better infrastructure to encourage growth, and if those ares also have the natural environment to sustain more houses, then that's where more houses should be built. It's not rocket science!
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Most of the land use in Cambridgeshire is for monoculture agriculture, which are deserts for biodiversity. Farmers should be subsidised to grow woodlands and meadows along their boundaries, encouraging long wildlife corridors that can connect with other boundary corridors.
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Each hardwood tree can store about 1 tonne of CO2 over a span of 40 years, and each person emits an average of 5 tonnes of CO2 per year, so to offset the emissions from a 900,000 population of Cambridgeshire over the next 20 years we need to plant 180 million trees. This requires 90,000 ha of land, about 27% of the entire land area of Cambridgeshire. Good luck with that. Growing trees is useful for all sorts of reasons, especially encouraging wildlife diversity and wellbeing, but getting to zero CO2 emissions also requires major investments in sustainable energy schemes and local food production.
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Cambridgeshire has very little heavy industry, so the bulk of air pollutants come from transport burning fossil fuels and agriculture emitting pollens. The best way to reduce both is to encourage local land use for sustainable electrical energy and vegetable and fruit production, not monoculture. If enough electricity is produced from sources such as solar farms and wind turbines, there'll be enough not only to charge electric cars but also to produce hydrogen from water to satisfy all transport needs.
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Economic growth consumes more resources, so it can only be justified if the local environment can sustain that growth in resource consumption, particularly water. As it seems even the current numbers of houses are consuming too much water, planned economic growth should be set to zero.
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Priority must be given to types of businesses that employ local young people, rather than just requiring highly skilled people to move to the area. Locations of those businesses must be encouraged in the areas where homes are, otherwise cross-city traffic will continue to increase leading to worse road congestion.
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It’s futile setting economic growth targets without ensuring the environment can sustain the extra drain on natural resources the larger number of homes will consume. Since the water table is not able to meet the current needs, how can you plan for more houses?
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The original intent of the green belt was to prevent unsustainable growth of the city into the surrounding countryside creating an urban sprawl and destroying the character of both the city and the surrounding villages. Growth would be forced to take place in satellite towns, and if jobs are co-located with new homes, this would encourage shorter commute distances. The premise of the question only arises if the plan breaks down and the new jobs are in the city and not in the satellite developments. So stick to the plan! More importantly, sustainability in the context of the climate emergency means we must reduce our carbon footprint. Most schemes for doing this by offsetting via trees and sustainable energy schemes like solar farms, wind turbines and land source heat pumps all require land. The only land locally available to both the city and the nearby villages and satellite towns is the green belt. A sustainable development policy would ensure that all change of use within the green belt is only for CO2 reduction schemes.
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