Building a zero-carbon world
2010-01-15 from:guardian author:Terry Slavin
Dunster maintains that his Chinese imports will not be cheap knock-offs but built to a high standard, designed and supervised by a China-based subsidiary, ZedFabric, which is also designing the components that will be used in his Chinese projects. The wind turbines are undergoing research and development to ensure that they operate in a UK urban environment.
Wendy Lee, who heads ZedFabric, said: 'We're the end users, so we know what we want. On that basis, we've made the products. Orders from Beijing's projects are already generating economies of scale. Once we open up our products to the construction industry in the UK, the impact will be huge.'
Dunster is nothing if not a big thinker. He has developed his own low-carbon building standards, known as Zed standards, and hopes he can persuade Ken Livingstone to adopt them as he rewrites London planning regulations to include more use of renewable energy. He is being consulted by the mayor over the 1,000-home eco-village planned for the Thames Gateway, which will be masterplanned by Arup.
The brief is that the homes have to get to zero-carbon and remain commercially viable, which Dunster thinks can be done: 'We're showing them we can reduce the cost of the supply chain so the microgeneration technologies are affordable.'
Bill and Ken joining forces - you can already hear the pencils snapping and the teeth grinding in property development offices across the capital.
'Most people find Bill's approach too inflexible,' says Chris Twinn, head of sustainability in Arup's London office, who has worked with Dunster for 15 years. 'But if he didn't have that, he wouldn't have got where he is. He wouldn't be leading the UK in sustainability. He pursues things relentlessly where other people are persuaded to default to the norm.'
Dunster knows there will be accusations that the transport miles generated by shuttling parts and people between London and China undermines his zero-carbon objectives, but shipping is no more carbon-intensive than sending a container on a juggernaut from southern Spain.
He says: 'It's more important for the Chinese to develop their low-carbon technologies than ruffling a few feathers of political correctness in the UK.
'We're quite simply rewriting the rules about what's possible in the UK. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably the right move.'