Planning guidance aimed at developers interested in building and running a proposed new business park in Bulwell, fuelled completely by renewable energy, has now been published. Mark Patterson looks at what the energy park could offer businesses.

WITH rising petrol and diesel prices affecting their transport fleets and ever increasing gas and electricity bills at offices and factories, businesses today face an unprecedented problem of climbing energy costs.

So if a new business park was being built that gave companies a guaranteed supply of cheaper electricity, then who wouldn't be interested? Planners and politicians at Nottingham City Council are hoping that this very offer will help persuade businesses to relocate to a new energy park which is proposed for a 6.9 acre site next to Blenheim Industrial Estate in Bulwell. Plans to develop the park, which would run on renewable energy produced in an 'energy centre', took an important step forward this month with the release of informal planning guidance aimed at private sector developers.

The city council, which owns the Bulwell site, wants to sell the land and see the park built and run by private sector businesses.

The new guidance, which is open to consultation, sets out a timetable for the park's development and could lead to a land sale and development contract being signed in early 2012. If all goes ahead as planned, the energy centre will be supplying green electricity to four hectares of new business units within two years of contracts being signed.

"We want commercial development including offices and manufacturing," said Councillor Alan Clark, a city councillor for Bulwell and the authority's portfolio holder for energy and sustainability. "Ideally we will have a mixture of R&D, admin and manufacturing on the site. It could lead to a cluster of companies involved in energy and green technologies which will be attracted to a park which gets all of its electricity from local renewable energy. As far as I can find out there is no other business park like that and this will be its USP."

Talks with potential developers about the business park began in January when a well-attended "soft marketing" event was held at Loxley House. Since then, the city council has, not unexpectedly, refused to identify interested parties, but officers have spoken to several businesses and said that they welcome approaches from consortia. Project leaders at the council are also open to suggestions about the exact form of renewable energy that will fuel the site, including the energy efficient business units that will cover 20,000m2 of the site.

However, city council deputy leader Graham Chapman has already said that he does not want "Eastcroft Mark II", which rules out an incinerator burning household waste to produce heat and electricity. But since two hectares of site – more than a quarter of the land – has been allocated to the energy centre then the most likely energy source appears to be some other form of intensive energy-from-waste facility.

The Business Post understands that one local company which has spoken to the council about the site is Chinook Sciences, an Anglo-American company already based in Nottingham which builds large recycling plants using a patented gasification process. However, another possible energy source is anaerobic digestion, which produces electricity from the methane produced by rotting food and plant waste. Whatever form of green energy is eventually developed at Bulwell, the new business park's lure for small businesses will include the supply of a reliable and locally-produced form of electricity, and possibly heat, at prices consistently lower than those offered by the utilities.

Project officers hope that this offer of cheap energy, combined with other factors such as new high-grade business units and the site's location close to Junction 26 of the M1, will attract companies from Nottingham and across the country. Nobody at present can say how much cheaper the park's power will be compared to normal utility prices. But, said Mr Clark, "It's not just about a lower price – it's about certainty of price. Carbon energy is volatile in pricing while renewable energy generation by its nature is much more stable. And businesses like certainty."

Possible employment numbers at the park have been put at 500 people.

However, this figure is derived from an employment density guide and is based on the potential 20,000m2 size of the park occupied by the business units. In other words, if the business units are all full, around 500 people would be in employment at the site. It does not mean that 500 people will be employed in creating green energy at Bulwell.

But nor do those magic words "500 jobs" include the number of people who could be employed in building the new energy park. But while no figure has been put on the number of construction jobs that could be involved, the new planning guidance states that developers of the site will be obliged to draw up an agreement with the city council about the employment and training of local people – or, as the guidance puts it, "to maximise the generation of new local employment opportunities." The developer will also have to make a financial contribution to such services.

But would the energy park be in competition with other local business parks? No.1 Nottingham Science Park, for example, was built to attract green sector businesses and has the energy design credentials to boot. However, Nick Ebbs, CEO of Blueprint, which built and runs No.1 NSP, says the energy park should complement the city's business park offer by providing a base for energy-intensive manufacturing. "From what I understand of the concept, the park would be primarily relevant to end users — typically manufacturers – with high energy needs," he told Business Post. "And in a world with rapidly escalating energy costs, as new economies follow our carbon dependent economic model, prices can only go one way. But the park would not compete with No.1 Nottingham Science Park or Nottingham University Innovation Park as these projects are more focused on R&D and high-tech prototyping — not manufacturing.

"Actually, the concept would complement the offer already available in these locations which have already secured an impressive array of cutting- edge green-tech companies."

Of course, running a business park using green energy is hardly a new idea. In Nottinghamshire and elsewhere in the UK there are business parks using biomass boilers and solar panels to provide a proportion of their tenants' energy needs. Blueprint's No.1 NSP, for example, has a biomass boiler and roof PV.

But fuelling a business park entirely by renewable energy appears to be a significant step up in ambition.

Furthermore, the energy park could generate so much electricity that the surplus could be exported to neighbouring businesses such as Rolls-Royce in Hucknall and to new housing in Ashfield district.

The city council stresses that it will be the market that dictates what will be the most effective form of renewable energy at the new business park.

But Mr Clark is confident that a park which is totally self-sufficient will give the park, and Nottingham, a business USP which will grab national attention and attract companies from outside Nottinghamshire. For Nottingham, and perhaps especially for Bulwell, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the city, this should mean the creation of jobs in areas such as R&D, admin and manual jobs in manufacturing. There is, ultimately, a feeling of "build it and they will come" about the energy park based on BioCity's success in developing a thriving biotech sector around itself.

"BioCity is at the high-tech end of the spectrum," Mr Clark added. "But we have modelled our expectations on the success of BioCity and other places such as the Southglade Food Park."