Royal weddings: The Crown Estate, renewables and British efficiency

It’s almost here, according to every major news outlet and cable channel in America. The U.S. is all atwitter about one thing: the British royal wedding of Prince William set for this week. It’s almost like the last 200 years of separation from the motherland never actually happened.

Let’s face it: most of the Colonies have royals fever, just like the Brits. We’ve been flooded with royal souvenirs and wedding watch parties and tours of Princess Diana’s personal items as if we’re right next door rather than a large ocean and nearly a half hemisphere away.

So, let’s join in the gusto. Let’s go with the flow. Let’s follow the fray. Let’s talk about the royal family---energy style.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that the royals love renewables, especially offshore wind. Why so specific, you wonder? Well, because they get a good kickback---of course, not a kickback in the mob sense of things. But, it pays to own the seabed, let’s say.

And they do. Literally. A lot of the royal family expenses are, in fact, pulled from public funds at the moment, but that’s about to change. And, the sizeable land portfolio of the monarchy is tied up in what’s known as the Crown Estate. Now, way back when---many, many generations ago---King George III made a trade. He offered the cash made from the Crown Estate to the people and country of England in return for his household expenses being covered by government. Traditionally, this has been a pretty awesome deal for the Brits. (In 2007, England netted about 160 million pounds with this system. The Crown Estate brought in 200 million, but the family cost about 40 million. All in all, an excellent return.)

Well, everyone’s feeling the recession these days, and now the royal household has been told to freeze expenses and even asked to make some cuts. Long story short: It’s said that, in 2012, the household costs will be reconnected to that Crown Estate.

Once reconnected to the cash made from the Crown Estate, you might hear the Queen herself chanting, “Build, baby, build” as offshore wind grows by leaps in bounds. After all, circling back to the top of this long tangent, the Crown Estate owns almost all the seabed (up to 12 miles offshore) off the English coast. So, leasing that to marine/offshore energy companies could make the Crown Estate a pretty penny, since all the rights to lease that area were granted to the Estate by the Energy Act of 2004.

So, with the new royal household set to be connected directly back to the Crown Estate, leasing seabeds to offshore wind facilities may be one way for the new princess to pay those high electric bills at Buckingham Palace.

But, not the only way. Renewables aren’t the only new-fangled energy concept the royals are adopting. They’re also big on negawatts---yep, energy efficiency.

Apparently, Ron Harper, the deputy property manager at Buckingham Palace, sits down every five years and checks on the efficiency of the household, going so far as to looking at heat resonance imaging and energy ratings.

A computerized building management system controls heating and power at the palace for optimum balance. It even controls the use of fans in the palace kitchen. Harper also touts the benefits of Buckingham Palace’s combined heat and power units for energy and the LED technology they are installing to control the lighting more effectively.

Overall, while the wedding this week may be an old tradition in grand old fashion, the British monarchy has shown that it’s actually very cutting edge when it comes to the latest in power sources and efficiency.