Biomass: a blessing or curse for Leith?

Renamed Edinburgh's Waterfront in the grandiose speak of property developers, the area was to be home to a new wave of upmarket developments and not one, but two new tram lines.

Yet almost ten years on from when the first 375,000 penthouse apartments sold out in a matter of minutes at Western Harbour, Leith is still waiting.

While new residential developments have all but disappeared, there is, however, one new project looming large on the horizon.

Earmarked for a site near Albert Dock, a 300 million biomass plant is the latest venture by developers who seem resigned to a protracted slowdown in the housing market.

Forth Energy, a partnership between Forth Ports and Scottish & Southern Energy, lodged its plans for the facility in March and has so far met with near universal opposition from the local community.

Already hurting from the debacle of the tram project, the people of Leith have united against plans for a renewable energy plant in their midst which will include a smokestack 120 metres high - twice the height of the Scott Monument.

But is there a way to see past - metaphorically at least - the giant chimney and the objections from those who will have it in their backyards?

Forth Energy says the plant will create hundreds of jobs during construction and will maintain around 45 once operational.

Should it gain planning permission from the Scottish Government, the facility will be up and running by 2015.

Read the documents lodged with the planning application and you'll see the firm predicts the facility will generate 32m per annum for the local economy and produce up to 90 per cent less carbon than a coal-fired power station.

But the same report also admits there will be "eight significant visual impacts" across the city, where the plant will blight Edinburgh's skyline.

More than 90 per cent of the fuel, wood chip or pellets, will be transported from overseas by ship; hardly the greenest way of producing energy.

Indeed, environmental campaigners, including Friends of the Earth Scotland, are amongst the most vocal opponents of the proposals.

Despite Forth Energy's assurance that all the wood will come from sustainably grown forests, FOE Scotland says the Leith plant (and three others earmarked for Rosyth, Dundee and Grangemouth) will help push up demand for timber, posing a "major threat" to biodiversity, indigenous land rights, food security and the climate.

In fact, the question of whether biomass is a green way of producing energy is far from simple.

In December a report produced by the Environment Agency argued biomass could play a major role in helping the UK reduce its carbon footprint, with the best plants producing emissions 98 per cent lower than the coal equivalent.

The worst plants, however, which transport fuel thousands of miles (as would be the case with Leith) and which only produce electricity (Leith would produce electricity and heat) have the potential to be more damaging than coal, it argues.

Then there is the question of the plant's health impacts, with NHS Lothian calling for work to be done to assess any potential risks before it gains approval.

As for the question of whether the facility is right for Leith, the developers point to the example of Hammarby in Stockholm, where a biomass plant sits amid the wider regeneration of a once run-down industrial area of the Swedish capital.

The supporting documents for the proposed Leith plant tell us that the population of Edinburgh has grown by more than five per cent since 1998.

With that sort of population growth expected to continue, the area once grandly re-dubbed "the Waterfront" will play an increasingly important role in Edinburgh's future.

But with the prospect of a direct tram link to the city centre currently shelved and a power plant earmarked for a site where campaigners claim a community park was once planned, you could be forgiven for arguing that dreams of urban renewal may still be some way off.

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