Labour's plans for its new eco-towns look increasingly threadbare. The idea of these “exemplar” eco-communities, as outlined in The Times this week, are now a laughable caricature of any future eco-living arrangements. I am therefore resigning from the committee that is supposedly advising on their energy footprint.

I am an expert in off-grid living - in places without mains power or water, where homes and workplaces use renewable energy, harvesting water from rain or river or spring, and deal with their own waste. So when Gordon Brown's first public pronouncement after he became Labour leader was the building of five eco-towns (later raised to ten) with populations of between 5,000 and 20,000 people each, it was welcome news. The homes would add to existing housing targets and would be affordable, the areas healthy and energy-efficient, and the social arrangements would maximise local living, working, food production and education. The whole project would be emblematic of the Brown Government. I went to a seminar with Yvonne Cooper, then the Housing Minister, in which she invoked Aneurin Bevan's 1945 housebuilding crusade.

It was easy to be suspicious: could we be sure that these eco-towns would really reduce their residents' carbon footprints to the bare minimum? But there did seem to be a way to try to make that happen.

I was asked by the Department for Communities to serve on the energy working paper committee, and at the first meeting we were led to understand that we had a free hand to make suggestions to the developers on the technologies for energy provision in the eco-towns..

No matter that one of theproposals is for a Tesco town: it has emerged that the supermarket chain is the sole financier of one of the most likely schemes to be approved - at Hanley Grange, near Cambridge. If Tesco would source all the food locally, it would be as welcome as any of the big housebuilders also trying to win project approval. No matter that the schemes will have a huge carbon footprint - the new houses are badly needed after a decade of low housebuilding. If the new towns added to the total housing targets, were “affordable” and a genuine opportunity for innovation and best-practice eco-design, surely they would be a good idea.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Government announced last month that the homes would become part of current targets, rather than an addition. The ten eco-towns are now a “maximum of ten”. Under pressure from the housebuilders' lobby, the planned zero-carbon standards are being relaxed. It seems that the Government is no longer attempting to introduce best practice.

But the biggest failing is that in areas where there is no existing energy or water infrastructure, the Government and developers insist on bringing in mains power from the national grid, and that water and sewage disposal should also be provided in the normal way.

This is a huge wasted opportunity. Apart from the expense in laying them, which play havoc with any plans to provide affordable housing, the new power and water lines will be supplemented by renewable energy and rainwater harvesting equipment that the eco-towns will doubtless want to introduce.

When the nation has just learnt that there will be 40 per cent too few power stations by 2010, what is the point of connecting these new showcase towns to the energy grid? And when floods and water shortages are forecast, would it not be wise to ensure that at least some of these towns were independent of mains power and water?

I was prepared for others to disagree. But it was impossible to stand by and see the subject ignored. “The Government has already decided that it is not interested in off-grid eco-towns,” I was told.

Should the Government not listen to its advisers first? Or is it only interested in what the developers think? These are developers that in many cases have simply reheated old plans and resubmitted them in the guise of eco-towns; developers that quite understandably prioritise making a profit over being a genuine successful case study for the eco-town of the future.

“People will not come and live in eco-towns if they are not connected to mains power and water,” I was told. But has anybody actually asked this question? Not as far as I'm aware. The people who live in eco-villages such as Hill Holt in Lincolnshire (this is the type of place from which truly successful eco-towns will grow) prove that there is a demand for it. And do we really think we can create a successful eco-town if it is filled with people who want mains power and water?

One argument against off-grid power and water supplies is that it might contravene EU competition rules, because nobody would be able to compete with the local monopoly supplier (ie, the developers). It is tempting to disprove that myself - by launching a utility company that offers to install power and water supplies free in return for a long-term fixed-price contract, immune to the predicted spike in energy costs of the next few years.

It would be a sensible precaution to raise the bar so that it is actually genuine eco-people who wish to live in the planned towns, not people who are simply going to chuck coal on their wood-burning stove, walk to the city limits, hop into their 4x4s and head down to the supermarket for their weekly shop.

Nick Rosen is the author of How to Live Off-Grid

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