Watch Out

The plan for London’s zerocarbon quarter was cemented in April, when Mr Livingstone was taken to inspect Dongtan, the vast ecopolis being built on Chongming, an island three-quarters the size of Manhattan at the mouth of the Yangtze river in China. Dongtan is being designed to produce almost no carbon emissions, with solar-powered boats and buses running on hydrogen fuel cells.

By 2040 Dongtan is expected to house half a million people in a prototype urban community. It will be self-sufficient in water and energy, sourcing its food locally and composting or recycling all its own waste. While the rest of China is swathed in polluted smog, Dongtan will be a clean-breathing, zero-carbon oasis, its designers say.

Mr Livingstone described the Chinese eco-city as a “beacon to the world on how to achieve a low carbon future . . . breathtaking in scale and ambition”.

But the scale of the urban problems facing China are also breathtaking. According to The Economist, Chinese cities, already home to 560 million people, may have to expand by another 300 million people in the next 14 years.

China is the world’s largest producer, and consumer, of coal, and houses half of the top ten most polluted cities. But Beijing is now leading the way in low carbon urban development. All Chinese buildings will be required to halve their energy use by 2010.

Humanity is swiftly becoming an urban species, with less than half the world’s population now living in the countryside. Dongtan will work because the Chinese Communist Government will ensure that it does, but whether Gallions Park prospers depends on whether it can be made commercially viable.

“We hope that this development acts as a benchmark for all future buildings projects,” said Simon Reddy, a spokesman for Greenpeace, which is acting as consultant on the project. “Scandinavian countries have been moving in this direction for decades, and there is no excuse for this not to happen in the UK.”

The post-industrial wilderness of Gallions Park seems an unlikely setting for Britain’s first carbon-zero housing estate. The site was formerly part of Beckton gasworks, the largest gas factory in Europe, which also produced ink, dyes, mothballs and fertiliser. In the rain, the smell of gas still hangs in the air, while oil shimmers on the surface of the puddles. Before a single low-carbon brick is laid, the entire area will have to be decontaminated and cleansed of its toxic past, according to Mr Bax.

The aircraft from City Airport thunder overhead, belching CO2, and ensuring that future residents of Gallions Park will be reminded, regularly, of the galloping consumption of non-renewable fuels outside their carbon-free enclave.

The Government has indicated that it will be watching the Docklands pilot scheme closely. “We want the Thames Gateway to lead the way towards our long-term national target of 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050,” Yvette Cooper, the Minister for Housing and Planning, said recently.

This week the bulldozers finished preparing the site, leaving behind a clean slate and a single empty Castrol barrel — a fitting monument to the fossil fuels of the past and present, and a possible carbon-free future.

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