Forth Energy send Leith Biomass plan up in smoke. Finally.

The first blog post we wrote about the Forth Energy power plant plan on Leith Docks was in January 2010.

Since then, there have been nearly sixty more blog posts, five consultation responses, protests, stalls, public meetings and petitions.

After all this, and some two years later, it has come as a welcome surprise to learn that Forth Energy have finally seens sense and abandoned their proposed Leith Biomass plan. 

You can read the full press statement that was released by the firm here.

Now we can only speculate at the real reasons behind the company's decision to abandon the project. 

• Was it because it was the most unpopular project in Edinburgh's planning history?
• Was it because they realised they wouldn't be able to overcome the objections from the statutory consultees like Scottish Natural Heritage?
• Was it because the subsidies are getting pulled left right and centre?
• Did they blink first in the back room negotiations between themselves, Scottish Enterprise and the City of Edinburgh Council over the future of the site?
• Are they about to announce a big wind turbine manufacturing deal on the docks which is more lucrative?
• Or is it just a clever move from a firm used to playing 'subsidy tetris' with its land holdings?

The reality is, it's probably a little bit of all those things. 

Over the months that we've been following, and campaigning against, this proposal, it's been amazing to see civic Leith join forces in opposition against the plan. 

The numbers of local people, especially in the No Leith Biomass campaign group, who have put in hours and hours of time to digest tedious, and very technical, planning documents has been remarkable.

Not to mention the effort that went into producing leaflets, manning stalls, protests, lobbying, producing mock up images, and so on.

The politicians who backed residents also deserve a thanks. It was heartening to see that politicians from across the political spectrum could work together to oppose the plans.

Indeed we've lost track of the number of Holyrood motions that have been lodged, and parliamentary questions that have been asked, urging the Scottish Government to reject the project.

There is even another Holyrood motion that has been lodged today, by the Greens.

Locals also received support from city-wide and national organisations too, like Friends of the Earth and Biofuelwatch. The Cockburn Association put in a particularly well worded objection to the proposal.

All of the people involved will be glad to see their hard work has paid off. And indeed a celebratory drink is certainly in order.

And it would appear that some people have learned so much about the real environmental impact of the Forth Energy proposals that they may well continue to support campaigners in Rosyth, Dundee and Grangemouth where the firms big biomass plans are still very much alive.

Just as importantly, many local businesses in Leith who depend on tourism and attracting visitors from elsewhere in the city will be hugely relieved that one cloud on their horizon has been removed. 

However, it's clear that Forth Ports might come back with a new plan. 

If they do, we hope they'll have listened to some of the things we said about How Forth Energy Could Win Friends and Influence Leithers.

Greener Leith has always said that if they work with local residents to support the development of a really decentralised, community owned, low carbon district heating network, then they might get somewhere. 

And you might say it'll never happen in Leith. But the council is already moving ahead and installing a shared heating system in Cables Wynd House this year at a cost of more than £2million.

This will lower the heating bills, and the carbon footprint, of 200 households in Leith.

Could that development be the first in a series of 'heat islands' that might one day form the basis of a genuinely decentralised heating network in Leith? 

Only time will tell. 

What they said: 

Our views on the Edinburgh Local Development Plan consultation

There once was a time when the plan for the regeneration of Leith Docks was illustrated with this picture. Well, it's looking increasingly unlikely that this plan will ever come to fruition. At the moment, Scottish Enterprise are busy spending £500,000 of tax payers money on a new masterplan for Leith Docks, which is almost entirely owned by Forth Ports.

Simultaneously, the council is in the process of preparing a new Local Development Plan for the whole city.

This plan is important because it will set out the key land uses, and principles that will guide development over a number of years.

Both these processes have huge long term implications for Leith.

Recently, the consultation period on the plan's "Main Issues Report," came to and end. Greener Leith put in a submission. Here are some of the things we call on the council to do: 

• Protect the greenbelt whilst there is still plenty of 'brownfield' area left within the city.
• Adopt a 'minimum density' policy within the city to avoid sprawl and promote sustainable housing.
• Explicitly support national and local Government targets on promoting active travel.
• Adopt a favourable approach to community owned renewable energy schemes.  
• Preserve agricultural land close to the city on the basis that we might need it in the future if oil becomes significantly more expensive.
• Promote policies which favour the city centre as the best location for both office and retail developments.
• Prevent developers from providing their quota of affordable housing 'off-site,' as we think the current policy works and helps to produce mixed income communities.
• Take a more robust approach to conserving our built and natural heritage.
• Explicitly acknowledge and seek to expand active travel networks set out in the council's Active Travel plan. 

When it comes to Leith more specifically, the report asked people to choose between two options. We chose, like some other community groups, to reject both options as too extreme and dogmatic. Instead we called for a flexible approach to the regeneration of the docks that recognises:  

• Significantly increasing the amount of retail space around Ocean Terminal without building large numbers of new homes puts the vitality of Leith's existing town centres around Great Junctions Street and Leith Walk at risk. 
• Not all green industries are the same and not all industries which claim to be "green," actually are. Whilst we would welcome green jobs on the docks this must not be to the detriment of the existing inhabitants and local economy and therefore we suggest some factors the future plan should consider.
• Zoning large swathes of brownfield land soley for industrial use should be avoided as there is no guarantee that the hoped for manufacturing industries will in fact materialise. Depending on what happens to the economy, and indeed government subsidies for renewable energy, it may transpire that more jobs could be created over the lifetime of the next plan by doing something else. 
• There is still less green space per person in Leith than anywhere else in the city. New parks and allotments need to be created in the area.
• There are a number of current active planning applications that will see existing small light industrial premises converted into commercial offices and housing. We believe the future plan should aim to preserve the amount of light industrial capacity of the area in order to promote a diverse and resilient local economy.  

 You can find our full consultation response here, but you might also need to read it in conjuction with the Main Issues Report document to make sense of it. 

Revealed: That Forth Ports "understanding" in full

After a tortuous series of emails, we're pleased to publish the full text of the  Memorandum of Understanding that has been signed between the City of Edinburgh Council, Forth Ports and Scottish Enterprise. 

Despite the vast sums of public money that could potentially be thrown at the docks in the coming years, and the fanfare that was made about it at the time, the public agencies involved in the deal have been surpisingly reticent in their willingness to make this document public.

Given that it turns out the contents of the MoU seems to comprise largely of disclaimers that make it clear that no-one will be liable if anything goes wrong, one wonders why they were so coy.

Anyway, what can we learn from the document that we don't know already? It seems to indicate that all parties are signed up to developing the docks as a new industrial hub for Scotland. Something many in Leith may welcome, but may not happen as quickly, or as easily, as some would like if this Herald article is true.

However, it would appear that the new owners of Leith Docks are particularly keen to persuade the public sector to foot the bill for improvements to the lock gates at the mouth of the dock. This will allow larger ships to make use of the dock - and presumably generate greater profits for Arcus. 

And it also sets out a five year timetable for work on the docks, implying that publicly funded works in and around the docks area could be starting by this time next year. 

A cynic may question what bearing this agreement has on the consultation scheduled for next Wednesday on the new City Development Plan. Afterall, to some it may seem that it won't matter what Leithers say - or what sketches the planners draw - the future of the docks is already a done deal. 

Leith Docks Memorandum of Understanding

Forth Ports and planners to outline docks future at public meeting

Leithers will get a rare chance to hear, and question, Forth Ports staff on their proposals for the future of the docks in a meeting called by planners.

The meeting, which somewhat ironically is to take place in an emty shop unit in Ocean Terminal - the shopping centre Forth Ports built and is now trying to sell - aims to allow local residents to consider the two broad options for the future of the docks that are proposed in the councils Main Issues Report consultation.

Officials from Scottish Enterprise, who are subsidising the production of a new detailed masterplan for the land owned by Forth Ports, will also be in attendance.

Ocean Terminal Local Development Plan Event

Eventually, the council will adopt one of the two options and incorporate it into a new Local Development Plan that will guide the overall direction of development on the docks for years to come.

You can find more details on the Local Development Plan on the council website and you can find out more about the planning policies and developments affecting the docks in this post we wrote a couple of weeks ago.

Leaked: Future of Leith Docks all at sea

It may feel like the regeneration of Leith has been frozen in time, ever since the financial crash.

This week there has been a flurry of announcements about Leith Docks. We'll provide the simplified version here: 

1. The Leith Biomass plant planning application is unlikely to be considered by the City of Edinburgh Council until June 2012 at the earliest. 
2. As we predicted, councillors have decided not to spend £84million pounds on infrastructure improvements in the docks area until there is clarity about "plan B" for the docks.
3. Alex Salmond announced in the Scottish Parliament that Scottish Enterprise will be funding detailed studies into what could amount to that "Plan B." The first tender for a new docks masterplan is worth £400,000-£500,000 with more public cash to come. As yet, no wind turbine manufacturer has confirmed they want to invest in Leith.
4. The Scottish Government says that they will spend a £100million+ windfall from Westminster on developing "renewables infrastructure," and the Scotsman reckons that a good chunk of this may end up being spent on port infrastructure at Leith.
5. And in more exciting, albeit slightly unrelated news, Leith docks based wave energy machine manufacturer, Pelamis, delivered one of their giant red snake things from Leith to Orkney, and learned that they've been short listed in the Scottish Green Energy Awards. 

This matters, because there's an important planning consultation going on that could shape the future of Leith Docks for many years to come. We'd encourage as many local residents to try to digest some of this information and take part in the Local Development Plan consultation. 

If you can feel yourself ageing at the very thought of it, a civic minded councillor helpfully leaked this briefing to Greener Leith today. It was produced by senior planners for local councillors. But there's no reason why councillors should keep this stuff to themselves is there? Here's the official position at the moment:

Leith Docks Briefing Note to Elected Members 

Basically Leithers, there seems to be two choices on offer. Potentially lot's of industry and no business case for a tram. Or some industry, some houses, and maybe a tram at some point.

The former option seems to be being pursued by the Scottish Government and Forth Ports. The latter seems to be the favoured option by planners in the City Council.

And in both cases, neither the Scottish Government, or the council, would appear comfortable backing the giant Biomass plant that Forth Ports would still like to build. 

If you put in a submission to the Local Development Plan consultation, please do share your response with us. Greener Leith will publish a response in due course. 

You have plenty of time to ruminate on this. In fact you can do it over the entire festive period.

If you want to speak to a council planner to explain things in more detail, then there will be some sort of stall at Ocean Terminal on the 7th of January, 11am-3pm.

This post was updated on the 12th of November, with new information about the Scottish Enterprise tender, and details of the Scottish Government announcement of more money for renewable infrastructure.

Forth Energy kick Leith Biomass plant into the long grass

An artists impression of the biomass plant, made using Google Earth. This view looks down Constitution Street from a tall building.If you take a look at the Forth Energy website, there's nothing on it to indicate that their plans for a giant power plant that they propose to build on Leith Docks have been put on the back burner.

Indeed, the firm has been busy of late, churning out glossy PR brochures for the other biomass plants they propose in other parts of Scotland called things like, ahem, "Greener Grangemouth." The brochures contain the same virtually meaningless pledges on fuel sources and questionable carbon savings claims that their planning applications do.

The only change now is that they've got some titles that imply in some way that they're part of an environmental organisation. Although imitation is the greatest form of flattery, as you can imagine, we've had some of Scotland's finest legal minds poised to sue for trademark infringement the moment Forth Energy publish their equivalent, "Greener Leith," newsletter for weeks. But for some reason it hasn't happened.

Recently, local MSP Malcolm Chisholm shed some light on the apparent delay at a Leith Links Community Council meeting. He said he'd managed to meet with Charles Hammond, head of Forth Ports and he confirmed that the Leith Biomass plant will be the last to be pursued by Forth Energy (Forth energy is part owned by Forth Ports).

Not only that, Mr Hammond apparently told Malcolm Chisholm that the council will not now consider the planning application in December as we'd previously be led to believe, but "later." Given that every single candidate in the recent City Centre by-election said that they'd vote against the Leith biomass plant proposals, it's probably an astute move on their part to push consideration of the proposal beyond May - as they may be hoping to avoid the proposal becoming a political issue in the next Scottish Local elections.

Judging by the way the politics is playing out, this would seem unlikely. We've already seen that the Leith Biomass plant remains a critical local issue, in large part due to the sterling efforts of the No Leith Biomass campaigners. But it's not just a local issue - the questionable environmental wisdom of burning lots of imported timber just to generate electricity is rising up both the policy and political agendas throughout the UK. 

Recently, the independent statutory body set up by the UK government to advise Westminster and the devolved administrations on climate change issues, The Committee on Climate Change, released a report that was pretty skeptical of using biomass for power generation in the way that Forth Energy proposes to do.

You can read their whole report below:

CCC_The Renewable Energy Review

This report, suggests that biomass should not be used for power generation without being fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage technology (which currently doesn't exist) and is probably not a good use of scarce global biomass resources.

This report has not gone unnoticed in Scotland. SNP MSP for the Falkirk area, Angus MacDonald ("Greener Grangemouth" is in his constituency) has submitted this motion in the Holyrood parliament:

Motion S4M-00748 - Angus MacDonald ( Falkirk East ) ( Scottish National Party ) : UK Committee on Climate Change Comments on Biomass

That the Parliament notes the recent publication by the influential UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) of its review of the potential for renewable energy development; in particular notes its comments on biomass, including its preliminary conclusion that without CCS (carbon capture and storage), biomass would probably be of more value when used outside the power sector"; considers that this conclusion runs counter to Forth Energy's large-scale biomass proposals in Grangemouth, Rosyth, Dundee and Leith; welcomes the Scottish Government's preference for biomass to be deployed in heat-only or combined heat and power schemes, generally prioritised in off gas-grid areas, at a scale appropriate to make best use of both the available heat and local supply; looks forward to the CCC's more detailed assessment of biomass later in 2011, and calls on Scottish ministers to reject Forth Energy's proposals that require ministerial consent.

That motion is interesting as it explicitly calls on the Scottish Government proposals to deny Forth Energy consent for all four of their proposed large biomass plants.

Another recent motion at Holyrood may also be of interest too. Several Edinburgh MSP's have backed this one, which gives support to a planned protest march against the Biomass proposals later this month.

Motion S4M-00616 - Jim Eadie ( Edinburgh Southern ) ( Scottish National Party ) : Moving Planet March

That the Parliament supports the Moving Planet march and rally on Saturday 24 September 2011, called by the international non-governmental organisation, 350.org, to mark the Global Day of Climate Action; notes that 350.org calls for a sustainable energy future for the world at 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is what many scientists consider to be the safe upper limit; notes that the event will coincide with the world car-free day and that it will aim to put pressure on global leaders to commit to reducing CO2 levels in advance of the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa, in November 2011, and welcomes the parallel aim of this event, to draw attention to opposition to the proposed Forth Energy biomass plant at Leith Docks.

Despite all this Forth Energy insist the Leith Biomass plan is still on the table. If you wish to support the campaigners who are trying to put the Leith Biomass plan in the long grass permanently, and you were wondering what else you can do now that you've put in your objection to the Leith Biomass plant, you can do these two things:

1. Use www.writetothem.com and urge your all your local MSP's - especially your list MSP's - to support both of these motions. Malcolm Chisholm, constituency MSP for Leith, has signed both, but there are still some list MSPs who have not.

2. Take part in the planned protest event on the 24th of September. You can find out more about the event here.

Forth Ports apply to demolish listed grain silo

Forth Ports have submitted a planning application to demolish the Grade B listed grain silo on Leith Docks. They need to do this, in order to clear space for the giant power plant they propose to build on the site instead.

Interestingly, whilst the Scottish Government get to make the decision over whether the Biomass plant gets the go ahead, it is the City of Edinburgh Council who decide, in the first instance at least, whether to grant permission to demolish the building. Of course, if the Scottish Government doesn't like the decision that the council makes then it can "call the decision in," but nevertheless, this application gives the council some measure of direct influence over the planning process.

Apparently, Historic Scotland, the Scottish Government agency that might intervene, start from the premise that, "because listed buildings are a rare and unique resource, the presumption will be against granting permission to demolish unless it can be shown that there is no viable alternative."

Prior to the Forth Ports application for Listed Building Consent to knock down the grain silo, Historic Scotland have kept their cards close to their chest on the biomass plans saying simply in thier submission to the Scottish Government:

"In the absence of this [listed building consent] application setting out the justification for the demolition of the listed building we are unable to give a view on the Section 36 application [to build a biomass plant]. As you will be aware
we cannot give a view on Listed Building Consent “in principle”.

Now that Forth Ports have submitted the planning application to knock down the grain silo, it turns out that the council have been having technical difficulties uploading all the Forth Ports Listed Building Consent application documents. However, we have managed to obtain an electronic copy of the main report, which sets out the 'justification' for why the Grade 2 building should be demolished to make way for the giant biomass plant. Whilst there are apparently pages and pages of appendices too, this report gives the main arguments. We understand that they are being digested by both council planning officers and Historic Scotland.

Of course in the City of Edinburgh Local Plan, the Grain Silo was to be retained, with a large public park constructed around it.

What do you think? Forth Ports claim that building a power plant on the site is the only viable course of action. Do you think that the Grain Silo should be demolished so that Forth Ports can build an even larger power plant on the site? Do you think it should be retained? Would a park be better?

Forth Ports Imperial Grain Silo Demoltion. Main Report

Leith biomass plans draw international condemnation

A coalition of five major environmental groups from the United States have written an open letter to the Scottish Government opposing plans by Forth Energy to build a giant wood fired power station on Leith Docks.

The letter, which represents a further set back for the developer, illustrates the scale of concern over the environmental impact of large scale biomass in the places where Forth Energy claim to able to "sustainably" source 75% of their fuel from.

Charlotte Encombe, chair of Greener Leith said:

"This letter provides further evidence that despite the "green wash," Forth Energy will not be able to source sufficient quantities of wood fuel for their plants without causing huge environmental destruction or pricing more sustainable uses of wood out of the market."

"Thousands of people, as well as numerous organisations from all over Scotland have signed up to demand a halt to the Forth Energy power plant plans over concerns about their environmental impact - and now we are joined by environmental organisations from overseas."

The organisations behind the letter are:

• Friends of the Earth US
• Dogwood Alliance
• Biomass Accountability Project
• Save Americas Forests
• Center for Biological Diversity

You can read the full text of the letter below:

Forth Energy US NGO Objection