How to design a sustainable heavy industrial estate

This paper describes the design process used to produce a flexible and adaptable layout of the estate to maximise use of renewable energy and minimise carbon emissions. The design and planning was complex because it had to anticipate a 50 year development program. Issues addressed included site characteristics and context, land allocation to optimise energy efficiency, embedding a multi-user co/tri-generation system in the middle of the estate, identify and estimating the production of energy from on-site and regional sources of renewable energy, options for reducing greenhouse emissions, waste reduction and reuse; and issues relating to the governance and management of the estate that will enable these site innovations to occur.