Sponsored by
National Trust pledges 45 per cent cut in carbon emissions
Stately homes and historic buildings will be powered by "grow your own" green energy under plans announced by the National Trust today to halve its use of fossil fuels by 2020.
The Trust is planning to install more than 50 new boilers in mansions and larger buildings over the next five years, which will be powered by wood from its estates and their local areas.
Other home-grown energy schemes for the Trust's building stock of 300 historic houses, offices, visitor centres and 360 holiday cottages include solar tiles, water wheels and wind turbines.
And efficiency measures such as sheep's wool insulation supplied by local upland farmers to keep Trust-owned cottages warm and the development of "low-carbon villages" aim to cut energy use by 20%.
The drive to generate green power on-site at National Trust properties forms part of wider moves to "go local", which will see more control of budgets and management handed to individual sites.
The Trust estimates the move to green energy will cut its carbon emissions by 45% from 32,000 tonnes to 14,423 tonnes a year by the end of the decade - equivalent to taking 4,500 cars off the road.
And it will save money for the charity, which spends around 6 million a year on electricity and heating.
The Trust hopes most of the schemes will break even within the next decade, with some paying back the investment in as little as five years.
The Trust said new incentives from the Government, under which people will be paid for the electricity and heat they generate from small scale energy systems, would help the technology pay its way.
But Dame Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust said more ambition and investment by the Government was needed to boost small scale renewables.
A number of green schemes have already been installed at Trust properties, including solar panels on the roof of Dunster Castle, Somerset, a wood pellet boiler at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire and a wind turbine at Middlehouse Farm in Malham, Yorkshire Dales.
In total the Trust has 140 renewable energy systems already in operation on sites across England, Wales and Scotland, on buildings ranging from historic castles to visitor centres.
Dame Fiona said; "World leaders may not have provided a political solution to the climate change problem at Copenhagen, but that should not delay us from delivering practical solutions on the ground.
"It also makes good business sense. By cutting our energy consumption and growing our own energy locally, from renewable sources we will have more money to spend on the places we look after, and a more sustainable and resilient operation."
She said the increased use of small-scale energy was "good for the climate, good for economics, and good for our properties to have local resources they can rely on".
She said National Trust properties were already witnessing the impacts of climate change.
"We have charted the impact of intense rainfall and rainstorms, we have charted temperature rises on our gardens, charted the impact of previous warmer winters when the bugs stay alive all year and munch their way through precious, historic textiles," she said.
National Trust chairman Simon Jenkins said he was something of a sceptic when it came to climate change.
But he said: "What we can't deny are the figures emerging from our properties. It's not our job to stray into politics, but there are changes people measure that we have to do something about."
He added: "We're moving into biomass because it's cheaper."
The National Trust is also trying to move towards bringing its historic houses to life, and giving visitors better access to the sites - for example being able to play croquet on a croquet lawn.
Individual houses were being allowed to take on their own character - to "speak with their own voice", Sir Simon said.
Part of that process was to remove some of the centralised bureaucracy of the Trust, and from next April houses will have their own budgets and spending plans - and more control over how they tell their stories, he said.
In the coming year, the National Trust will continue with its food campaign to provide 1,000 allotment spaces by 2012, install bee hives at 40 of its properties and launch its own branded food range of locally grown and reared products.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
