As followers of English football around the world will know, my local club Luton Town made a special guest appearance in the Premier League last season. Millions of people heard of Luton for the first time, and there was much curiosity about Kenilworth Road, the old and eccentric home of the Town. Videos circulated of the away fans entrance, where fans basically climb a flight of metal stairs in someone’s back garden.
While all this was going on, work has been quietly underway on a new stadium just down the hill from where I live, and last week the final designs were unveiled. I’ve followed their development for years. Like several other climate minded persons in the town, I’ve taken every opportunity to prod the club and their architect on sustainability, and so it was great to see a whole range of green features in the updated design.
The indoor areas of the stadium will be heated and cooled using air source heat pumps “strategically located in the roof space of the North Stand.” A separate set of heat pumps will produce hot water. Ventilation will come through a heat recovery system that will capture heat on the way out of the building, and use it to warm incoming fresh air in winter.
To power these electrical systems, the developers have designed an extensive solar PV system for the roof. A proposal in the planning documents suggests a possible layout, which I have dutifully counted and can report that there are 1,784 panels. This won’t just reduce carbon. It would reduce the running costs of the stadium for years to come, saving the club a small fortune in energy bills. It will also be a very visible statement of their environmental ambitions, and so I very much hope they make it off the proposal documents and onto the finished roof.
Transport is the biggest source of emissions for almost any public venue, and here Luton Town has an advantage, whatever the final roof might look like. They had a choice between two sites, one in the town centre and one out by the junction to the M1. The latter would favour people travelling in by car, the former is a five minute walk from the station and the bus interchange. They chose correctly, and so for the lifetime of the stadium the 25,000 visitors will be able to travel by public transport.
The development is aiming for an ‘excellent’ rating on the BREEAM standards for sustainable construction. There aren’t many stadiums that meet that standard. Tottenham’s new ground does, and so does West Ham’s Olympic retrofit. Everton are aiming for an excellent rating for their new stadium (they’ve included rainwater harvesting – something I’ve pitched to Luton Town without success.)
Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium was recently named the greenest in the Premiership, in part because it has added an enormous battery bank in the basement, but its BREEAM rating is the next one down at ‘very good’. If the final build lives up to the ambitions in the planning documents, then it looks like Luton Town’s new home would be joining those clubs in the top five.
It is unlikely to be this season, as the club is having to direct its funds towards the building project rather than player salaries, but Luton will return to the Premier League at some point. They’ll have an impressive new stadium to welcome away fans to, and it will be one of the greenest in the league.
The Earthbound Report 