School will share energy centre with housing development to negate carbon footprint

Willmott Dixon is to build a 拢13m zero carbon school that will share its heating system with nearby housing.

The Crouch Hill Community Park development, built for the London borough of Islington, will have a carbon negative footprint when in use, the company has said. It includes new accommodation for Ashmount Primary school and Bowlers nursery, as well as a new energy centre.

鈥淸Zero carbon] will be achieved by the school sharing heat distribution from the new energy centre with adjacent housing, a shared approach to community energy distribution that is a glimpse of how low and zero carbon buildings can be delivered on future UK developments,鈥� Willmott Dixon said.

The school鈥檚 energy centre will use a biomass boiler and gas combined heat and power (CHP) unit, and share excess heat with a nearby council housing development. It will also use passive measures to reduce its energy consumption.

Penoyre and Prasad, AKT, Gifford and Whitelaw Turkington are also working on the project.

The company said it expects the school to achieve an 鈥檕utstanding鈥� BREEAM rating.

George Martin, director of Willmott Dixon鈥檚 in-house low carbon consultancy, Re-Thinking, said, 鈥淎s we work towards creating new buildings from 2016 that make no net carbon emissions, the new school at Crouch Hill Community Park will provide our industry with an important learning tool for a community-wide approach to low carbon energy that can be refined and developed on future schemes. 

鈥淚 praise London Borough of Islington for having the foresight and imagination to make this project happen and we have assembled a very experienced team to deliver it successfully.鈥�

Work will start on site in late February and finish in the summer of 2012.

>> Find out the latest government thinking on the James Review at BSEC, 23 - 24 February 2011, ExCeL London.

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