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PROXIMITY PRINCIPLE 2.0 Emer O’Siochru May 2010 “is ar scáth a chéile, a mhaireann na daoine“ Seanfhocal Gaeilge “in the shadow or shelter of each other, live the people “ Old Irish saying The old saying tells us that it was an uncontested fact in Ireland that living close to each other was essential for a happy human life. That human life thrives when human actions are so confined in space to impact on others now seems strange in the light of our current desire for ever more expansion and separation in our living and working arrangements. Did this old saying emerge from a need to make the best of a bad situation or is it a forgotten but essential truth that still has resonance today? This paper will put the case that closeness or a better term ‘proximity’ was valued as life enhancing in the past for good reason, despite the propaganda of the rural revisionists and furthermore, that a redefined and augmented ‘proximity’ has more even more to offer communities in the troubling time ahead. There’s more than a little bit of magic about the notion that something unexpected and wonderful can come simply by confining and combining existing elements differently but that is exactly what the Proximity Principle 2.0 offers us. We have invested heavily in putting considerable distance into our living and working arrangements over the past fifty years in Ireland. We live apart from each other, we work far from where we live, we shop far from where we work, we grow food far from where we eat and so on. Our support systems are all distant and invisible; electricity is generated remotely, waste is processed remotely, knowledge is generated remotely to our everyday experience. Something profound has happened to the way we live. This paper does not explore what happened, others better able will contribute to that topic in this book. We will look instead to the past for clues to the immediate future.

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Figure 1: Scattered houses, Co. Galway, Ireland. The way we live now.

Irish Settlement Patterns Myths First we examine the past to debunk some myths. The Irish people are not culturally predisposed to isolated settlement patterns. Contrary to what is generally believed, the historical records and the maps show that Irish people consciously chose to live close together where and when they had the freedom to do so. The Vikings founded many of our coastal towns but the Irish had their own proto town, set in the fertile plains and river valleys. These were the monastic settlements of early Christian era and were centres of trade as much as learning and piety.

What is less well known is that as population increased, Irish society was developing the village structure along the European model in the 16 and 17th Centuries i.e. farmer and farm labourer families living alongside artisans and small scale merchants in compact mixed settlements. In these villages, farmers travelled from the village everyday to the tillage and orchards in-fields and further to the out-field pastures.

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Figure 2: Listrolin, Farm Village, Co Kilkenny

The Cromwellian re-conquest put an abrupt halt to this evolution – towns and villages were broken up and new settlers and non rebellious installed on isolated farms. Only in the areas protected by the powerful Norman Butler family around Counties Kilkenny, South Tipperary and Waterford can we see surviving evidence for this farm/village form in the 1830 Obi map records. (see Fig 2).

The displaced Irish were prevented from coming together in the better lands but, given the relative freedom of the poorer lands on coasts and hillsides they again formed settlements. We can see evidence of this in the many clachan settlements (see Fig 3) on the western seaboard, today mostly abandoned. The western seaboard of Ireland contained the highest density of rural population in Europe in the first half of the 19C when the entire island hosted and fed eight million people. This evidence is countered by those who claim that the Irish had little choice but to live in these dense settlements as all of the better land was retained by the absentee landlords and let out to conforming tenants. Another argument is that Famine was brought on by the un-restrained breeding of the Irish who foolishly ignored the fact that the poor land could not maintain their families. In fact the land maintained them pretty well for many generations; by using

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the nutrients from the sea to feed the soil, well organised pasturage systems

Figure 3: Term an, Clachan Village, Co Kerry

and the efficient lazy bed system of cultivation - until of course, the potato failed. Contemporary accounts tell of healthy handsome happy people, even if a bit unwilling to take instruction from their betters. The native Irish had to wait until the 18th century when political and economic conditions fostered the founding of the market villages and towns most of which survive today. However, these new villages and towns were centres of trade and exchange, not the homes of farmers. While they were often laid out by the freehold owning landlord, they were built by Irish Catholics who had won a significant interest in their property in the form of long leases and leases for lives.

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Figure 4: Castle pollard, Market Village, Co Westmeath

This was in complete contrast to the village development model in England, where the landlord offered only limited tenancies in buildings which he built. This newly propertied merchant and professional class of Catholics, led the struggle for the Land Acts which finally redistributed the agricultural land, and from that platform of security, the national struggle for nationhood. So it can be said not unreasonably, that the Irish village can be thanked for national Independence. The Loss of Proximity 1.0 But in the meanwhile the native Irish had accepted rural isolation as the natural order. Isolated farmhouses had become dominant settlement type for farmers; its original imposition forgotten. This loss in folk memory led to a second great scattering, this time guided by well-intentioned motives. After the terrible Famine of the 1840s, the improving Congested District Boards consolidated the fragmented holdings of the tenants into separate freehold farms and individual farmhouses, breaking up the villages in the processes. It never crossed the minds of these public servants that the villages had any value

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in the new Ireland they were building nor that consolidated farms could be provided at the same time as retaining the existing settlements in use. Not only did this policy undermine the survival of the Irish language by making it synominous with isolated rural life, it destroyed much potential for economic development. The evidence is convincing for this conclusion. Today, the area where that the Congested Districts Board defiend as ‘congested’ i.e. over-populated, coincides (Fig. 5) almost exactly with the areas of disadvantage and population loss identified by the Government’s ‘Clar’ designation (Fig 5a) and the areas identified in the National Spatial Strategy as having weak village structuration.

Figure 5: Congested Districts - Clar areas of Disadvantage – NSS Weak Village Structure

The loss of village structure and thus of the benefits of proximity led to the loss of opportunity especially for non-farming families, which in turn led to massive emigration of the young and enterprising. This loss of population is graphically clear in the cartographic project by Martin Charlton at NIRSA that shows the population of counties by their size. The first map illustrates the population before the Famine; the second population loss and gain by county size in 2002.

Figure 6: Charlton’s (2007) cartograms showing demographic change : county populations are shown proportionate to their respective surface areas

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Proximity 2.0 Proximity has been rediscovered and to a certain extent reinvented as a positive principle having been eclipsed by the potential of globalisation and the elimination of distance by cheap fossil fuels for many years. A google search brought up a surprising number of different incarnations in widely different contexts. Each context illustrates a particular attribute and the combination of all these is what I term Proximity 2.0. It’s most familiar interpretation or use is in the environmental sector and refers to waste management systems; Thus we get Definition 1:

“The proximity principle advocates that waste should be disposed of (or otherwise managed) close to the point at which it is generated, thus aiming to achieve responsible self-sufficiency at a regional/or sub regional level” Basel Convention 1989

In this case, the proximity principle enables and delivers “responsible self-sufficiency” which is something we will need in the emergency times. Definition 2 comes from the technical field of industrial processes.

“Proximity is the main tool used in manufacturing to enable one-piece flow, flexibility and to quickly assist another station on the U shaped production line” Principles of Product Development Flow 2009.

Here, proximity fosters smooth-flowing processes where glitches can be spotted and rectified quickly. This kind of flexibility is essential to resilience building, again a useful attribute in uncertain times.

Definition 3 of the concept of Proximity is in the knowledge economy discourse.

“In spite of increasing global flows of ideas, capital, goods and labor, the rise of a knowledge-based economy and changes in the organization of the innovation process have actually increased the value of geographical proximity to innovation.” Sonn and Storper 2003

Geographical nearness fosters the random encounters that spark new ideas that no IT media has been able to replicate. This runs counter to the argument that all you need for innovation in the countryside is fast broadband. Definition 4 comes from town and country spatial planning and is familiar to local government administrators, professionals and social and environmental advocates.

“Proximity should be favoured over dispersal in settlements to encourage community interaction, make public transport, local services and environmental initiatives more viable” Campaign to Protect Rural England 2008

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Rural services are in decline in Ireland and will be under greater threat with the New Emergency. The more dispersed the settlement, the greater the cost of providing its population with the services and maintenance it needs. Even though councils coped reasonably well with this winters floods and snow, rural roads remain potholed and pitted as budgets were exhausted by the immediate emergency measures. A second harsh Winter would render some roads impassible. Definition 5 of Proximity stems from economics the theories of US economist and writer Henry George.

“This premise that parks have a positive impact on property values is known as the ‘proximity principle’. It suggests that the value of living near a park is captured in the price of surrounding properties.” Frederick Law Olmstead 1856 (Olmstead was the architect who laid out Central Park, New York City).

This aspect of proximity is the most revealing and useful when we plan for the future because it tells us that investing in useful infrastructure or desirable amenities can be paid for from the increased value of the nearby/adjacent land. Proximity, here, generates value, and if recouped by the community, money to pay for further services. In sum, then, Proximity 2.0 – combining all of its benefits of its various aspects - offers the following:

1. Enables recycling of waste especially for energy 2. Creates flexibility and resilience 3. Fosters innovation 4. Makes services viable 5. Adds value to land

What Proximity 2.0 is not is about is Agglomeration. Agglomeration is a term used to describe the benefits of putting similar uses together. It is familiar in retail studies i.e. retailers benefit from other retailers selling similar goods nearby as consumers are attracted to the choice and convenience offered and increased footfall leads to increased turnover for everyone. The agglomeration effect often outweighs the advantage of a local monopoly in particular classes of goods. Neither is Proximity 2.0 linked to ‘benefits of scale’ for example; the efficiencies possible by building and servicing a large number of similar houses or other buildings in a limited area. On the contrary, Proximity 2.0 describes the advantages of placing very different - not similar - uses and functions in close relationship. The advantages that accrue to agglomeration and scale are dependant on cheap energy and globalization that produces an apparent simplification locally that masks a remote and therefore opaque and potentially vulnerable complexity.

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‘Localisation’ is an emerging concept used by environmentalists advocating the reversal of Globalization. But it is a modest and un-inspiring concept on which to base an emergency response. Proximity 2.0 goes beyond negative definitions to suggest potential synergies that emerge when difference activities and functions at linked at the local scale. The next section illustrates examples of these benefits. Applications of the Proximity Principle: The Natural Step1 is a framework for industry and business covering the generation and processing of waste. The framework builds on a basic understanding of what makes life possible, how our biosphere functions and how we are part of the earth’s natural systems. It points out that in a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing: concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust, concentrations of substances produced by society, degradation by physical means, and people are not subject to conditions that systemically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. The Natural Step seeks to make these systems apparent to producers through a rigorous, checklist process and using non-political logic eliminate pollutants through design. Similarly, Natural Capitalism2 developed by the US based Rocky Mountain Institute that researches and advises on sustainable settlement, building and transportation design, describes the objective of ‘industrial ecology’. This strategy discourages forms of amoral purchasing arising from ignorance of what goes on at a distance and implies a political economy that values natural capital highly and relies on what Amory Lovins calls ‘instructional capital’ to design and maintain each unique industrial ecology. These principles converge and locate in the concept of ‘Industrial Symbiosis’. The tasks of identifying and eliminating the unsustainable increase in substances and conditions and of eliminating ignorance of far flung effects is solved through the Proximity Principle that places different but related production systems physically adjacent to each other. This makes the problems and solutions apparent without the need of checklists and solvable without a huge investment in instructional capital. The Municipality of Kalundborg in Denmark was one of the first to introduce the world to Industrial Symbiosis which the application of the Proximity Principle in industrial estate planning. In Kalunborg, all waste is someone else’s raw material. Symbiosis means co-existence between diverse organisms in which each may benefit from the other. A symbiosis network links a 1500MW coal 1 Natural Step 2 Natural Capitalism, 1999, co-authored by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins.

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fired power plant with the community and other companies. Surplus heat from this power plant is used to heat 3500 local homes in addition to a nearby fish farm, whose sludge is then sold as a fertilizer. Steam from the power plant is sold to Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical and enzyme manufacturer, in addition to a Statoil plant. This reuse of heat reduces the amount thermal pollution discharged to a nearby fjord. Additionally, a by-product from the power plant's sulfur dioxide scrubber contains gypsum, which is sold to a wallboard manufacturer. Almost all of the manufacturer's gypsum needs are met this way, which reduces the amount of open-pit mining needed. Furthermore, fly ash and clinker from the power plant is utilized for road building and cement production

The symbiosis co-operation has developed spontaneously over a number of decades and today comprises some 20 projects. The exchange of residual products between the companies is laid out in Fig.6. The collaborating partners also benefit financially from the co-operation because the individual agreement within the Symbiosis is based on commercial principles. All projects are environmentally and financially sustainable.

According to Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, 19th & 20th Centuries model power plants had a higher cost and outage rate than the grid, so both supply and demand had to be aggregated through the grid to make sure that electricity production continued without interruption. In contrast in the

Figure 7: Kalunborg, Industrial Symbiosis Diagram: one example of output as input - sludge waste from wastewater treatment and gypsum waste from the power station are feedstock for manufacuring of Gyproc

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21st Century model, power plants have a lower cost and reliability than the grid, so affordable and reliable supply must originate at or near the customer for security of electricity supply. In the Fig. 7 below we can see that non-utility i.e. non power company electrical generation is increasing since the mid 1980s. 4 kinds of benefits are available form distributed energy. Financial economic benefits are ~10x for renewables, ~3-5x for others. Electrical engineering The In his book Small is Profitable” Lovins measured the benefits of ‘distributed’ or electrical generation in proximity to consumption at 2 to 3 times that of remote generation, more if grid is congested or reliability required. If the heat from electrical generation can be used then the benefits are doubled again. There are often other extra-over benefits or externalities for certain sites. We can see these benefits in Gussing, a small town in Austria has today, a rape-oil-refinery for the production of bio-diesel, a district heating unit supplied with wood, and a state of the art biomass-power plant with a generation of 2 MW electricity and 4.5 MW heat. The town is now 45% Self sufficiency in energy and has attracted 50 new companies, more than 1,000 new jobs, and total increased sales volume of 13m Euro/year. An Eco tourist business now sees 1600 visitors per week eager to learn how to the town reinvigorated itself. Lunen, a town in Germany will use organic material from local farms to provide electricity for its 90,000 residents producing 6.8mw to power and heat 26,000 houses. The gas is distributed through a new biogas pipeline network being built underground with a horizontal drilling robot

Figure 8 Rise of Non-utility (embedded generation), Rocky Mountain Institute

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Biogas can be produced from agricultural wastes mainly slurries of which there is an abundancy in parts of Ireland using the process of anaerobic digestion or AD. However, manure-only AD will not generate enough biogas and thus sufficient electricity to recover its considerable costs as manure at best produces 20cu m biogas/t manure. Mixing bio-waste from commercial and municipal brown bins transforms the economics. The gate fees (the fee chargeable for accepting wastes for processing or transformation) coupled with the added energy production from the higher energy content of bio-waste would easily finance the facility. Hauling manure from many widespread locations to a central point is expensive; taking pasteurised bio-waste to a rural location near or in a livestock farm has lower costs and lower Co2 emissions. It also returns food wast to where it was generated to close the nutrient cycle. There many environmental benefits to be gained from the digestion of manure of housed animals. 300,000tpa of biowaste at a 40% mix (by dry matter) with manure (60%) would mean 1.5 million tons of manure could be digested. This amount would be produced by only about 200,000 adult cattle (about 5% of the total) - but this is an extra 180GWh pa of energy that won’t otherwise be produced. It would reduce GHG emissions by about 150,000tpa of CO2 equivalent (2.5 times that required from manure management by the 2000 climate change strategy) - without accounting for the energy related CO2 savings. It would also reduce artificial fertiliser nitrogen use by around 400tpa of Nitrogen thereby saving about 100tpa of Nitrogen getting into watercourses.

Figure 4: Farm Anaerobic Digester, Co Waterford

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Simply combining food production and consumption close together brings benefits to consumer and producer by cutting out the middleman and eliminating transport costs. Traceability is not a problem in this farm market in Hanover where Herrmanndorf, originally a sausage manufacturer, vertically integrated all aspects of food production, processing and sales in one location. Beef, milk and pork are produced on the farm and neighbouring farms using own grown grass and cereals. Animals are farmed, slaughtered and processed on site using energy from their wastes. Beer is brewed, bread is baked from local cereals and sold in the farm market in the same way. Accommodation for workers and trainees is provided on site. The farm is a popular weekend destination for Hanover residents who enjoy a day out while doing their shopping.

Figure 10: Herrmanndorf Shop and Animal Housing, Hanover, Germany

Local agriculture can produce food, biomass for energy and structural materials and fibre for construction providing all the materials for village production and reproduction. Hemp is a particularly versatile crop that offers seeds and oil for human consumption, fibre for paper and clothing and hurd for use an insulant and binder in construction. Combined with lime, hemp forms a composite material that has many useful qualities. Hemp-lime is insulating, fire-proof, rot-proof, vermin-proof and moisture-buffering. With passive design, it can eliminate the need for space heating systems in new homes. Hemp-lime with timber construction saves 50 tons of Co2 and stores 5 tons of Co2. Hemp can be grown locally in normal crop rotations with low inputs, and is easily harvested and processed with conventional machinery. Lime and other additives are widely available in Ireland. We now come to the most forgotten of wastes, human sewage. It is not usually included in waste management plans but lumped under a special category called ‘wastewater’ in government and local government regulations. Water could hardly be described as a waste so it must be something we have put into the water and the question is why? Conventional sewage systems consume scarce freshwater and dilute nutrients. The nutrients are carried to rivers and the sea where they are extremely harmful (eutrophication). In turn, more

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nutrients have to be produced for agriculture, causing depletion of fossil resources and high energy demand. Considerable fossil energy is used to treat sewage and grey water this way. There as it turns out, a better way than gravity sewerage pipework to transport human waste to treatment and processing facilities. This is another Victorian invention, vacuum transportation system and use them already in trains, planes and ships. External and/or internal vacuum wastewater systems give design flexibility; small pipes 25 -100mm can go up to 6 metres vertically and 3 km on the flat. Costs are low for installation, maintenance, and future modification; vents and traps of the gravity system are eliminated. Water is conserved; a vacuum system uses 1 litre of water per flush. Multiple collection tanks and pumps can be used to separate different types of wastewater. Vacuum transportation is the last element of a new system that can recover all energy and nutrients in the food cycel. There are a few examples of such a complete system in place. A small housing development in Lubeck, Germany installed a completely independent sewage and domestic food waste treatment systems.

Cellulosic waste or woody wastes of which there is a vast amount from the residues of food production, forestry and construction, do not suit anaerobic digestion which is better suited to green or wet bio-wastes. Burning it recovers energy but leaves little of the original nutrients or carbon to return to the soil. The process of pyrolysis or heating without oxygen to release the volatile gases of the cellulosic material instead of combustion, is the better way. Pyrolyisis is

Figure 11: Lubeck integrated waste and energy system by OtterWasser GmbH

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a new name for the old fashioned process of charcoal making, and made a certain way, produces a ‘biochar’ that locks up the Co2 of the biomass and returns it to the soil where it stimulates and supports the soil organisms. Others will describe the benefits of biochar in this volume.

Figure 12: Biochar can reduce Co2 (International Biochar Initiative)

Pryolysis is not yet a commercial reality in Ireland or convincingly established elsewhere. Its promise is enormous as it can deliver renewable electricity to the grid, considerable heat for a local factory, bio-oil for heating and transportation, and biochar to commercial agriculture and possible future carbon credit sales. Claims have been made of an internal rate of return of over > 50% but these can only be delivered if all of the co-products are realised and that can only be achieved in the right location integrated in other production and consumption activities when the benefits of Proximity 2.0 kick in. ENLIVEN Study

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Energy was an already an important element of proximity 1.0 In the past. Pre oil exploitation, settlements were often founded near energy sources. An example can be found in Co Offaly on the foothills of the Sliev Blooms where a necklace of villages grew up around watermills on the Silver River of various kinds. In the 1930s, the source of energy changed to exploitation of the bogs for turf. As the source of energy shifted economic and political power shifted too. Ballyboy ceased to be the chief county town, and little known Frankfort, renamed Kilcormac rapidly developed with new worker housing because of its proximity to the turf works. As the bogs lost importance with the importation of oil and gas, Kilcormac also fell into sleepy decline.

EOS Future Design participated in a research project entitled ENLIVEN to prepare for a European funding submission that set out to look at how renewable energy resources could again be used as an engine of village development in 2005. We identified hydro, wind, forestry bio-energy and agricultural bio-waste resources available to the villages of Cadamstown, Ballyboy and Kilcormac. It was a first attempt to outline a new vision for rural communities using renewable energy sources close by. In the past, rural development policies have sought to preserve threatened ways of life or to revive those had already passed into history. These usually failed because external forces that should have been foreseen overwhelmed the efforts. The ENLIVEN study looked to the future instead of the past and actively prepared for largely predictable events. But the report did not overlook local place and local culture; - the plans were rooted in specific natural and social contexts. The study easily identified a potential 43% reduction in fossil fuel use and Co2 emissions in a rural community of 1200. We proposed a new Plan-led process of village development would change from incremental one-off house development in the rural village hinterland or the sudden huge developer-led anonymous housing estate at the edge of the village to a more controlled process. The following is a slightly amended version to

Figure 13: Watermills at Ballyboy and Cadamstown villages

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take into account political fiscal changes. The first stage of the ENLIVEN development process covers planning and design-

• The community of a village in decline or under potentially damaging development pressure would request a framework plan for the village.

• A revolving fund would be available to manage the upfront costs of the plan and the infrastructure development that follows.

• The local authority would contract a team of consultants directly or approve a set chosen by the community and would partner the team in the preparation of the plan.

• A Charrette to which all stakeholders participate is facilitated by the planning and design team on location over a number of days.

• Agreement would be sought as much as possible with landowners about what land should be developed within a five-year time horizon guided by sustainability objectives and community needs.

• These identified lands would be prioritized for new infrastructure and investment

• New access roads, parks, water, drainage and waste treatment and energy generation facilities and needed amenities and services would be located, sized and costed.

• A three dimensional plan would show the new roads, squares, parks and the heights, shapes and uses of the buildings which enclosed them.

• A design guide would be developed which reflected the local building vernacular and the distinctive qualities of the local settlements and set energy and other ecological standards for the construction.

Implementation would be carried out in two stages a) Infrastructure, services and public spaces and amenities, b) building construction on sites.

• The local authority would use its powers to clear title and/or acquire key land where the community and authority as a whole thought it was necessary for the benefit of the wider community.

• The local authority or, in partnership with a private or not-for-profit infrastructure developer/s–under building licences from the land–owners would carry out the infrastructure works and agreed amenities and service buildings. Equity partnerships are the optimal vehicle to align everybody interests.

• Landowners would build on the fully developed sites or sell them to self builders or in small groups to local builders in accordance with the design guide.

• The community or at least, the landowners in the community would have control of the sale price and to whom it sold the houses and sites.

• In addition a portion of the land (equivalent to Part V of 2000 Act ) should be given over to a Community Land Trust in the form of an Equity Partnership, which would provide housing for rent or purchase at a lower than market cost as it would not include the land element.

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This would ensure that locals were never priced out of their own area despite the high values created and that key skilled people could be attracted (mechanics, teachers or nurses for instance) that the community need for its development and maintenance. The Proximity Principle tells us that the land values created by the development of infrastructure, services and amenities can be recouped by the upswing in land values of served and adjacent property. Section 49 of the 2000 Act provides for the recoupment of investment by a local authority directly relating to a served site i.e. roads and pavements. The value added by the combined renewable energy and waste processing plant will attach to all land in the vicinity including developed properties. A new Site Value Tax promised in the programme for government will provide the means to collect that vlaue created. The SVT will also ensure that the developed sites are sold quickly and the revolving fund recouped to be made available to other communities. Over a year, ENLIVEN showed it could deliver 100% net renewable energy services through electricity and hot water mini-grids in the participating villages. However, at any one time, the villages could be exporting or importing non-renewable energy from the national grid. Balancing of supply by suitable demand uses will be pursued through the planning process (the Framework Plan) and by the active participation of local development agencies to identify energy-hungry, job creating uses. It may be advantageous to involve an ESCo (an Energy Services Company) to undertake the ‘top up and spill’ technical and pricing interface with Eirgrid and the billing of customers. Again an Equity Partnership structure would include consumers, investors and energy producers in a sustainable relationship. Activities that are flexible enough to use off-peak electricity generated by the wind turbine, such as refrigeration or kilns, will be attracted by very cheap rates to the participating rural villages. A local ESCo could make the extra costs of peak electricity use visible to users so that they have the option of postponing discretionary electricity use such as the drier or dishwasher until the energy demand and price, is lower. Metering and billing systems should be intelligent so that using electricity or hot water at the high demand times will cost more than the off peak times. Energy savings due to intelligent design, construction and retrofit could eventually reach 6,282,000kWh as a direct result of the ENLIVEN project for the three villages. As space and water heating tends to comprise more than 2/3rds of the total energy use, we can estimate that 8 tonnes is due to these uses. Extrapolating very roughly from this figure, and assuming cutting emissions by the percentages above we get a result of 3,700 tonnes of Co2 saved every year through conservation and solar panels by the ENLIVEN villages. At €22.47 per tonne, this represents a saving for tax- payers of €83,228 per annum if emission

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rights have to be bought by the government. It might be countered to this optimistic scenario, that funding is simply not available for the ambitious energy and waste infrastructure because of the low capitalisation and reserves in the banks and the pressure on public funds due to the crash in fiscal receipts. The Proximity Principle kicks in again and tell us otherwise. Funding has been allocated under two different catogories streams for rural development. The first is the Rural Development Programme which was set up to tackle the quality of life in rural areas and to promote diversification within the rural economy. 50% funding for private projects up to €150,000 is available which not-for-profit community groups will be eligible for a higher rate of aid at 75%. Administration and training is funded up to a generous 100%. €30,000 per project is offered for analysis and project development. This funding is appropriate for the Plan and Design Stages of the ENLIVEN process and would be available for reuse by further communities when recouped under SVT and Section 49 of the 2000 Planning Act. The second major source of funding is that allocated under the Water Services investment in the NDP, a total €4.7 billion. €89 million investment was planned of in 2009 budget although final figures were reduced. Small Wastewater Plants for six Villages in North and South Tipperary By PPP cost €10.80m (€1.9 million each on average). €1.9 million will easily cover the costs of a combined agricultural and human waste processing anaerobic with combined heat and power energy generation and nutrient recovery to the agricultural input quality for a rural village. The private sector will be willing partners in such a facility, thereby making these funds work for other communities. Opportunities for Proximity 2.0

• Environmental Pillar is now recognised as a ‘Social Partner’ at national level. Social partners have to be included in ‘partnership structures’ at every level and that every Leader Company (32) has to have an environmental representative as do City and County Development Board.

• Since the New Emergency conference, many of these representatives have taken their places on these boards. I am one such representative on the Westmeath Special Policy Committee for Environment and Water Services.

• I have put an item on the agenda to reconsider Westmeath’s existing specification and procurement of wastewater treatment systems. Others will follow.

• Site Value Taxation is in the programme for Government arising from policy development work by environmental network, Smart Taxes led by Feasta. We have been invited to discuss implementation issue with the

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Department of Finance on this day 31st May 2010as I write. Those who follow Irish governance will know that this is a big advance.

Review Obstacles to delivery of benefits of Proximity 2.0 in rural Ireland:

• Myth of historic model for single houses and under-valuation of the rural village still persists;- remote houses are still granted planning permission and being built despite the downturn.

• Until SVt is introduced, there is no easy way to capture land value

created by new energy and waste facilities to help fund investment- SVT is in the Programme for Government and is being actively considered by DoF

• Outdated drainage and wastewater building regulations and planning

standards – under revision not least because of budget constraints

• Outdated electricity distribution grid and cost structure – new Refit tariff for bioenergy is an advance, more needed

• The Limited Liability Partnerships legal structure needed for Equity

Partnerships is not yet available under Irish Company Law.

• Specialist silo-ed scientific, professional and business education and practice – persistent problem which is difficult to breakdown