Bracknell Forest Borough Council have issued a new leaflet designed to address some of the questions.

View the Leaflet Here - (PDF 393KB)

Renewable Energy for Bracknell - Information booklet

Bracknell Forest BC has produced a new information booklet about the proposed renewable energy features to make the redeveloped Bracknell town centre more eco-friendly and sustainable. The booklet includes answers to a number of questions posed by local residents setting out the context and the local benefits as well as impacts.

View the Leaflet Here - (PDF 585KB)

Bracknell Town Centre RENAISSANCE

Community Energy Win for Bracknell Renaissance

Bracknell Forest Borough Council has recently been awarded a £1.85m capital grant from the Energy Saving Trust's Community Energy Programme in connection with the Bracknell town centre regeneration project.  This was as a result of an application made to the programme by Bracknell Forest BC and TV Energy in July 2004.  The funding will assist with engineering and construction of a woodchip-fuelled CHP energy centre and heat/cooling distribution networks to supply green energy services to new and existing public buildings in the town.

Bracknell to become a European Beacon for Green Energy

Bracknell Forest Borough Council's bid for major European funding to support its ambition for the regenerated Bracknell town centre to be powered by green energy has been accepted by the European Commission.The project, christened Renaissance, will enable high standards of energy efficiency and green (renewable) energy technologies to be built into plans for the redevelopment of the outdated new town.

The total Renaissance project is worth £12.5M in total for Bracknell and funding from Europe is essential. The grant from the European Commission has been awarded under CONCERTO, a major new European Union initiative to support local communities in demonstrating the social, environmental and economic benefits of integrating renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy-management systems on a community scale. The Council, with partner TV Energy, will start negotiations with the Commission later this month to determine the final level of grant on offer.

The Renaissance project involves a consortium of three urban areas in Europe, each taking similar actions to increase the take up of sustainable energy and learning from one another in the process. Lyon in southern France and Zaragoza in northern Spain will partner Bracknell, which will co-ordinate the project.The project is scheduled to commence in 2005 and concludes in 2009.

The Bracknell Renaissance team includes the Borough Council, the Bracknell Regeneration Partnership, TV Energy, Waitrose, SEEDA, Slough Heat and Power and the University of Reading. Many other organisations will also be involved from across the South East region.

A great deal of work has already been completed as a part of an Energy Saving Trust funded feasibility study carried out by TV Energy to assess the town centre's energy needs and to develop a solution to meet those needs from clean, green energy sources. It is estimated that significant carbon dioxide savings can be achieved by adopting renewable energy into the town centre and that the new systems may be provided at no extra cost to the Borough Council, developers or consumers.

The European Commission funding will enable the Borough Council to work with a range of partners to design and install a state-of-the-art district heating, cooling and power system to serve the town centre which may run on sustainably produced wood fuel. Waste wood thinnings from local forests and woodland will help power the energy plant in the short term with new short rotation coppice planted to provide fuel in the medium to long term.  

The innovative plans could also include wind and solar energy installations. The project will also involve a significant amount of research and development to ensure that the highest possible standards of energy efficiency are adopted into the design of the new buildings and for those that will be refurbished.

The project will act as a leading example of how to develop urban sustainable energy schemes and the results will be shared with 13 other associated communities committed to support the project. This network of communities which stretches from the South East of England to the City of Venice, with its well known problems related to climate change and rising sea levels, to communities in Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, Croatia and Poland.

The Borough Council's Chief Executive, Timothy Wheadon, is excited by the award: “The Renaissance project adds to the catalogue of innovations that Bracknell Forest Borough Council champions. It will further add to Bracknell's profile as a high performing local authority and will make us stand out as a high quality town centre. In this age of uncertainty surrounding security of energy supply and global climate change, the town will be taking a positive step forward to solve these problems locally.”

BRACKNELL LATEST: Energy networks take shape

Phase 2 of the feasibility study will be complete by the end of May, and many of the more detailed aspects of the primary energy provision and infrastructure are being firmed up. From the first phase of the study, completed at the end of January, it was concluded that a mixture of renewable energy generation from woodchip CHP, wind, solar and anaerobic digestion of green waste streams combined with gas CHP would produce the best financial and environmental case for local residents and businesses in Bracknell. 

The retained and new build portion of the town centre development comprising the public sector buildings will act as the anchor for the installation of the heating and cooling networks. New private sector retail, commercial, leisure and residential areas will progressively provide additional energy demand to present a technically and financially viable scheme. Current activities are focused around providing heat, cooling and power into the networks from two energy centres, at the northern and southern ends of the town, with capacity to provide for the anticipated take up of integrated energy supply from those public and private sector buildings. Central network capacity would be such as to allow expansion of the connected energy demand to other buildings in and around Bracknell. Further increases beyond that potential identified above would require additional generating capacity located outside of the current development boundary of Bracknell centre.

New phase of study begins

TV Energy, Bracknell Forest Borough Council, SEEDA and Waitrose and David Wolfenden Company Ltd have recently completed the first phase of the detailed project feasibility study of Bracknell town centre, and initial conclusions have been drawn from the technical and financial analysis undertaken thus far. The outcome of the study has shown that integrated energy services incorporating a large proportion of renewable energy supply demonstrates the best financial and environmental solution over the long term for local residents, businesses and Bracknell Forest Borough Council. Further activities in phase two will refine the analysis carried out in phase one and work towards the establishment of an Energy Services Company as a means to providing clean, low cost heating, cooling and electricity for Bracknell town centre and potentially Waitrose HQ.

Bracknell residents want renewables

The feasibility study to determine how renewable energy can be incorporated into Bracknell is involving considerable local community and stakeholder consultation. Residents have championed the regeneration project as a great opportunity for renewable energy to prove itself as the future energy source for the UK. A report on the attitudes of local people to renewable energy and the regeneration plan has been produced by TV Energy's environmental sociology advisor.

Download the Report Here - (PDF 153KB)

Technical analysis progressing!

Part of the feasibility study of energy provision initially involves splitting Bracknell town centre into a number of 'energy islands', including the Waitrose HQ site. These islands comprise individual heating and cooling networks supplied from energy centres, and are defined in terms of the phasing of the construction process. As construction is completed, these networks will be connected together and joined by other surrounding developments.

2-Ten FM interview

In September local radio station 2-Ten FM included in a local news bulletin an interview with Michael Beech of TV Energy, discussing the Bracknell RE-generation project and how renewable energy will provide Bracknell with its primary energy needs. Our photo shows Michael in full flow at the station's Calcot studio, but the accomplished way in which he presented the Bracknell plan and background issues for the general public proved that he isn't just a pretty face!

RENAISSANCE in Bracknell

TV Energy, Bracknell Forest Borough Council, SEEDA and Waitrose and David Wolfenden Company Ltd have started work on a detailed feasibility study of Bracknell town centre to determine how renewable energy can be incorporated in the proposed town centre redevelopment. The study is supported by grant from the Energy Saving Trust's Community Energy programme.

The feasibility assessment will be undertaken over the next nine months and will include a detailed assessment of the technical options, financial implications and the development of a new Energy Service Company which will be the future delivery vehicle for the planned community energy supply. The study will also involve considerable local community and stakeholder consultation and involvement. The outcome of the study will be a business plan which will set the framework for the later development stages.

Capital funding opportunities will emerge as the outline of the project becomes clear, and it is expected that applications will be made to the EST Community Energy Capital Grant scheme as the next step on from feasibility funding, as well as to the EC Concerto 'Integrated Energy Supply' under the current Sixth Framework Programme.

The Concerto bid will be called RENAISSANCE: Renewable ENergy Acting in SuStainable And Novel Community Enterprises. Bracknell's bid partners will be Zaragoza (Spain) and Lyons (France). More on this in next month's update.

See under projects for background information about Bracknell.

The Bracknell town centre redevelopment plan is currently listed in the website of the South East Regional Assembly, under Urban Renaissance - Examples of Good Practice. 

Click on the link: www.southeast-ra.gov.uk/regional_policies/urban_ren/index.html