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Can We Really Go Beyond Carbon Neutral?
Posted Thursday, November 22, 2007
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Youlgrave's annual Welldressing celebrations celebrate the gift of water - and in Youlgrave's case its own self-sufficiency in the vital natural resource!
We’re grateful to ADAS and a member of our supporters’ group for the following information for our four parishes (Youlgrave, Harthill, Middleton & Smerrill and Gratton).
Current resources in Sustainable Youlgrave’s area are roughly as follows:
• Beef cows plus followers at least 1750 head
• Dairy cows plus followers at least 1750 head
• Sheep at least 3800 head
• Crops at least 170 hectares, grassland at least 2300 hectares
• Woodland around 278 hectares
• There are 8 dairy and 18 beef/sheep enterprises.
Alongside this, we have assembled a contact list of all the farms and other land ownership in the same area. Meanwhile, Haddon Estate has received a feasibility study for water power at Alport Mill from Derwent Hydro. SY has estimated the energy available elsewhere as ‘flow of river’. To this we can add a figure for solar hot water, solar electric and ground heat.
This should enable our consultants (Dulas, Celtic Composting and the Forestry Commission) to help us to calculate the valley’s potential for energy generation in kWh per year, and carbon savings in the form of tonnes carbon, CO2 and CH4 (methane). When we have the grand total, we will be able to offset it against the valley’s total energy use/carbon emissions and discover whether, in theory at least, we can achieve our slogan “beyond carbon neutral”, without external offsetting.
If we can, our project might well be unique. But (and it’s a huge but), to get there will require levels of co-operation, commercial risk, capital grants and wholesale electricity tariffs that have not been achieved elsewhere in the UK. If Government wants to meet the targets accepted by most experts (except of course, Melanie Philips) and now set by the EU, we offer a new model way forward for us to set our hands to and for others to replicate.
John Youatt, Chair, Sustainable Youlgrave
