Low-carbon town planned near Disney

THE Pudong New Area plans to build a low-carbon town near the future Shanghai Disneyland site in the next five years to attract tourists and better support the soon-to-be world's largest amusement park, a post-World-Expo plan revealed yesterday.

The new town, designed with a countryside flavor, will cover an area of 4.6 square kilometers around Shanghai Disneyland, and will be able to accommodate 100,000 people after completion, said the designer, Zero Carbon System, which built and operated the London Zero Carbon Case Pavilion at the World Expo last year.

Total investment in the country's first low-carbon town will reach 8.6 billion yuan (US$1.32 billion) and the project is expected to be completed in 2016, officials said.

The designer said most energy used in the new town will be from solar, wind and biomass sources. Meanwhile, water source heat pumps from the Huangpu River will cool residential buildings, commercial centers and other public facilities in the summer.

"The town will definitely achieve a higher return in the future," Chen Shuo, CEO of Zero Carbon System, said in a news briefing yesterday.

Chen said the project is aimed at a sustainable Shanghai Disneyland, which will be the largest of Disney's six theme parks worldwide.

In the plan, average carbon emissions will drop from the current 8 tons per person a day to 3 tons.

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