(London) Luxury electric cars, solar panels on castles and sustainable fuel for helicopters: the British royal family will innovate to reduce its carbon footprint, Buckingham Palace announced in a statement on Wednesday.
Charles III, who regularly highlights his interest in ecology, had already converted his 1970 Aston Martin DB6 to run on biofuel. Now king, he intends to extend this type of environmentally friendly initiative to the homes or means of transport used by the royal family.
In its 2023-24 annual report on the monarchy’s spending, the monarchy announced plans to convert its Bentley limousines to biofuel from next year, electrify its car fleet in the longer term, and switch to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for its helicopters as soon as possible.
Its royal properties in London will also be connected to district heating networks and equipped with heat pumps in the coming years.
As part of this “path to carbon neutrality”, Windsor Castle has already seen solar panels appear on its roofs for the first time.
These projects, all launched in 2023-2024, should “accelerate” next year, the royal family predicted in a press release.
The report also found that profits from the royal family’s land and properties, or Crown Estate, more than doubled to a record £1.1 billion ($1.94 billion) last year, driven in part by a boom in wind farms off the coast of the United Kingdom.
This Crown heritage, which is a major landowner and also maritime owner, includes a large part of the British seabed. The royal family can therefore grant authorizations to build offshore wind farms there.
Its profits have increased in particular thanks to the payment of option fees by operators, in order to “reserve” an area on which they will install their wind turbines.
The income generated by the Crown Estate is paid into the public purse, in exchange for an annual allowance (or “Sovereign grant”) which helps finance staff salaries, palace maintenance, official trips and royal receptions.
In last week’s throne speech, the new Labour government announced plans to give the Crown Estate more room to borrow and invest in renewable energy projects, including wind.