Royal green

Buckingham Palace to reduce carbon emissions

The government’s doing it, businesses are doing it - and now the Queen is too. Getting an energy audit done, that is - on the royal households. “We’re in the first phase of calculating our carbon emissions, and then we’ll be identifying action plans to help reduce them,” explained a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman. “Obviously we’ll be offsetting any emissions that we can’t avoid.”

The official audit by The Climate Group follows on the heels of an eco-makeover of Prince Charles’s Highgrove estate led by Forum for the Future [GF62, ‘Highgrove goes green’] and builds on a number of green measures taken at the Palace. The royal households can already boast, amongst other things, combined heat and power, LPG taxis and energy-efficient bulbs - even for picture lighting. This year there are plans to use the onsite bore hole, which currently supplies air conditioning to the Queen’s Gallery, to irrigate the garden and to cool the wine cellars. - Hannah Bullock

24 June 2007

Hannah Bullock