CNBC Business | Paradise Built 

Paradise Built 

Eight years ago, Tim Smit’s “world in a crater” vision became  a reality. Now others are following his lead. Boyd Farrow reports

When Liam Gallagher belts out Don’t Look Back In Anger on 14 July when Oasis play there, the Eden Project’s founder, Netherlands-born British entrepreneur Tim Smit will probably be on his feet. The archaeologist turned songwriter turned enviromentalist’s motto is: “Wouldn’t we all rather look back and say ‘I’m glad I did’ rather than ‘I wish I had’?”  

The Eden Project was an insanely ambitious £141m (€161.5m) initiative to replicate different eco-climates from around the world in three enormous biomes in an old china clay pit near St Austell, Cornwall. The aim was to create a destination where visitors could learn more about the environment, the challenges to energy supply, and the impact of these changes to the planet. It also, metaphorically, raises the roof with the occasional rock concert. 

Since opening on 17 March 2001, Eden has welcomed more than 10 million visitors and has generated more than £800m (€917m) for the regional economy in return for £107.5m (€123m) of public money. The remainder of Eden’s financing to date has come from commercial loans and donations; the only source of income since it opened being from visitors through the gate. An economic impact analysis showed that in its first eight months alone Eden generated £16.3m of spend at the complex itself and an estimated £111m within the south-west region as a whole. The Project employs nearly 500 staff and, beyond the biomes, it is estimated that around 3,000 local jobs have been sustained.  

Indeed, the latest Cornwall Visitor Survey found that Eden remains the top reason why people make the trip to Cornwall, with nearly four out of 10 people coming to the county intending to visit the attraction. But the plastic transparent cushions loom even larger in the public imagination. Last year, Eden came 50th in a YouGov poll of the world’s 500 strongest brands chosen by the UK public. Google came top.  

The Eden Project’s high profile is partly down to Smit’s boundless enthusiasm, hardly a surprise given that he was so heavily involved in raising the necessary funds for the venture. He told the Institute of Directors’ (IoD) annual shindig in May that his rule is to accept every third invitation he receives — which has resulted in him judging a dog show, opening a wing of a retirement home and judging the West of England Orchid Society’s annual prize-giving. “By going to all these things you meet these strange people who are doing the same thing you are and your horizons are always being opened. You get the fizz of never knowing where you are going. You build up this network of bizarre people because great things come from having your eyes opened to weird stuff,” he explained. 

He is also no stranger to irony: “My credibility is pretty damaged in  front of you,” he told the IoD, “because two years ago the Royal Bank  of Scotland asked the Eden Project to stop banking with them because  we were too risky”. 

“The world in a crater” is simply “the first expression in an attitude to life,” Smit says. “[Eden’s] mission is to point out our total dependence on the natural world in ways which don’t feel preachy and to demonstrate aspects of behaviour and thinking that encourage us all to explore the boundaries of what is presently called ‘sustainable living’.” 

Now other countries, with their sustainability on their minds, are keen to own their own piece of Eden. It is the Gulf States, who have the money if not the fondness for the actual Adam and Eve parable, that are leading the way. According to press reports, there are five Eden spinoffs in early negotiations. The one that seems to have had the most traction is on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. Apparently recreations of the Malaysian and West African jungles, packed with mahogany trees, orchids and banana plants and teeming with tree frogs and birds, will sit alongside offshoots of the Louvre and the Guggenheim. 

Smit will not discuss individual projects but he is keen for any Gulf Eden Project to have a localised identity. “The thing has to be infused with Arab tradition and motifs, poetry and art. There’s a growing awareness in the Gulf of a need for an Arab cultural renaissance, rather than just aping all things Western.” 

Ironically, the next stage in the original Eden Project’s evolution is The Edge, which, Smit says, “has its roots in our original ambition to have a biome that focuses on the world’s desert regions”. Despite some funding hiccups — Eden failed to secure any of the €57m being dangled as a prize in a TV-vote show, involving the National Lottery — the latest project is still on schedule to be “a new icon of regeneration” in a yet-to-be reclaimed part of the Bodelva pit. 

Plans are also gathering to build the UK’s first geothermal plant, which could potentially feed spare carbon-neutral electricity into the National Grid. Last month, Eden and its commercial partner claim, EGS Energy, claimed that this could be the first in a series of projects that could lead to Cornwall’s “hot rocks” – the granite outcrops enveloped around 4km below the surface – supplying up to one-tenth of the UK’s electricity.  

“Powering the Eden Project site from a renewable source of energy is clearly a priority for us,” says Smit, explaining that the power plant would consist of two boreholes, both between 3km and 4km deep, built within the same disused clay quarry as the centre. Water will be pumped into an injection hole and then allowed to percolate through the hot rocks. The hot water will then be pumped out through a second hole, returning to the surface at around 150°C, to be converted into electricity. 

The remaining heat in the water, enthuses Smit, can be used to heat local buildings, hopefully not just at Eden but in surrounding areas. Additionally, Eden could use spare heat either for growing exotic fruit and vegetables out of season or by opening a spa. 

In the meantime, with the pound practically in need of excavation, Eden is expecting its biggest surge of British visitors this summer as well as hundreds of thousands of smug tourists from inside the eurozone — whatever the weather has in store.