IT’S easy to be cynical about Gary Neville and his Damascus like conversion to sustainable living.
“As you can imagine with the Prius I was the subject of many jokes but then a couple of the players started building their own houses and they wanted to add energy saving technology."
He is fabulously wealthy, flies all over the world for football matches and wanted to build his own utopian hillside home despite protests by neighbours who would have to look at a 39 metre wind turbine.
He was also, in his playing days at least, an absolute sod to any journalist who tried to ask a question or get a comment.
That Neville plan - now without turbine
But his appearance as a TV pundit has been a revelation and here he is on a small stage in a big empty room at 4 Piccadilly talking about eco buildings and electric cars and the balance between sustainability and the real world as part of UK Green Building Week.
The event was sponsored by GVA although no payment went to Gary Neville.
The reason he has found himself in the green spotlight is his plan for an underground house on the Pennine Moors above Bolton designed by Make Architects.
An outline of the original plan is here.
It included a 39m high wind turbine and, leaving aside the cheap Tellytubby ridicule, Neville admits he was shocked by the level of opposition locally.
He said: “Working with the wonderful team at Make I wanted to create a design led house which was as efficient as possible. Local people were incredibly hostile. I did not realise I would be so alienated. It surprised and shocked me.”
He got permission after he lowered the height of the contentious mast but has since decided to scrap it completely and use another source of power generation.
He said: “If you are going for zero carbon you need on-site generation. People just did not buy into it. I personally met with 30 of the local residents and the team met 300 in a local church, I didn’t go to that one as I thought I would be lynched.
“Some of the lack of knowledge was very distressing. But you have to engage with people and I think they are happy now.
“One of them actually said hello to me the other day...”
Revised plans now make it two level and it should take less than a year to build with every stage of the process being monitored, assessed and evaluated by a team from Bolton University.
“I am willing for my house to be used as a prototype for the technology,” says Neville.
This will be the third house he has built.
“I built my first house when I was 22 years old and made lots of mistakes. I built my second when I was 26 and made even more mistakes,” he recalled.
“There was a cross roads in 2004 when they were talking of changing the regulations to make buildings more efficient.
“I was one of the very many who charged onto site to get a spade in the ground. I will always feel guilty about that.”
The properties he feels guilty about are at Top O’The Notts Farm, just behind his big footballer mansion, where he restored and extended a row of cottages and built three, four/five bed stone houses.
They were very plush, very well finished, very expensive and not very efficient.
But something has obviously clicked and he decided it was time to change.
He admits to “cringing” every time the LPG tanks got delivered up the drive and says he knew his old house was wasteful.
It has since been sold (for about £6m) to the Venkys, the Indian family who own Blackburn Rovers Football Club and Neville and his family moved into one of the much, much, smaller houses behind.
He swapped his gas guzzling car for a Prius and started planning his eco home.
And other stuff as well.
Like a fans hotel close to Old Trafford together with the United supporters club.
He admits this is not going to be zero carbon and he is having on-going discussions about the need for air conditioning.
He said: “I sit there with the operators saying we don’t need it. And they say “do you want people in the rooms?” and I think, this is Manchester, surely it can be done.
“We are doing the very best we can (to make is sustainable) but it has to be commercially viable. There will always be a balance.”
Inside the Bolton eco-house
The same applies in his professional life. He travels by train whenever he can but inevitably has to take flights to matches.
He tries to balance this with other measures and drives his hybrid car as efficiently as possible, (“I am only on the second tank of petrol in four months”) and is prepared to promote the sustainability agenda wherever he can, be it raising awareness amongst clubs or encouraging footballers to think more about the impact their lifestyles have.
“As you can imagine with the Prius I was the subject of many jokes but then a couple of the players started building their own houses and they wanted to add energy saving technology.
“And more and more of them are thinking the same way.”
And he thinks they could do much to promote the sustainable agenda. “We have seen the power of the Olympics with everyone working together and I would love to see sustainability discussed through football."
“People are more likely to listen to a footballer than, with respect, an MP.”
But as much as he wants people to follow his example he accepts that an 8,000sq ft underground petal house is not going to be a relevant example for most people.
I wonder how much green technology his Prius driving bother Phil has incorporated into the house he has just had built in Cheshire.
As for football itself, improving public transport to help the fans get to games without using their cars and thinking more about kick-off times so games could be played without the need for energy hungry floodlights, would be major advances.
His answers, especially on issues like staging the World Cup in Qatar, and companies gaining ‘green’ credentials through off-setting were considered and informed and he has already had talks with cabinet ministers.
As he said: “I have 30 years after football and I want to do something positive. I want to improve my knowledge and get better at what I do.”
You can’t argue with that.
The Green Building Council videod the event and you can watch it below and I promise you it will change your pre-conceptions about Neville. It’s an hour long though so make a coffee first.
You can follow Jill Burdett on Twitter here.
