Last week I attended a workshop on how Stockport can play its part in tackling climate change.  The challenge is to reduce our carbon footprint (as the fairly innacurate jargon goes).  This one focussed on buildings, development and power generation, with transport being considered elsewhere.It was a workshop to get ideas and opinions so no firm decisions were made, but it was interesting and encouraging to see what’s already been done.

For example, we looked at whether we should have wind turbines.  The answer a definite maybe (I’m not convinced).  Wind maps show which parts of the borough have higher wind speed, which turns out to be the eastern edge bordering onto the Peaks.

More encouragingly, we looked at district heating systems.  Traditionally we all have our own boilers which use electricity to heat up water.  That turns out to be pretty bad for the environment.  The idea is to use a local heating station, probably gas powered, to heat up water and then pipe it around an area.  Individual houses and businesses could throw out their boilers and get metered hot water, hopefully costing them about the same or less.

The problem with district heating is that you need a certain number of customers to make it economically viable, but the customers want to see it works properly before they sign up.  That’s where the Council could potentially help.  This system looks likely to be suitable for the Town Centre businesses initially – don’t expect to be throwing out your home boiler any time soon.

We also looked at biomass (essentially wood chippings harvested in the Borough and transported to local businesses with biomass boilers).  Also, with three rivers running through Stockport, hydro-electric power could play a small but useful part.

On housing, new regulations mean that the buildings being build over the next few decades should be very good (though there was some disagreement over how much wriggle-room the less scrupulous developers had).

The real issue is the old housing stock – the vast majority of which will still be around in 2050.  Getting this properly insulated – cavity wall, loft and double glazing – is the biggest challenge.  That’s especially tricky when most of it is privately owned.

Hopefully a mix of subsidies, improvement schemes and planning controls can improve the situation over the next few years.

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