Living off the grid in Wales

– Fighting climate change is much more than a day job for Chris Vernon and Erica Thompson. It is a way of life.

They are part of a groundbreaking Welsh government scheme under which people get to circumvent tight planning rules so long as they build an eco-home in the countryside and go back to working the land.

The ‘One Planet Development Policy’ was adopted by the Welsh government in 2011, and so far, 32 households have signed up.

The aim is ambitious: in a small country where people on average use three times their fair share of the world’s resources, Wales wants its One Planet people to use only the resources they are due. Which means a simpler smallholding life, spending and travelling less, growing and making more.

A spokesperson for the Welsh government said the scheme was an important niche initiative, rather than a model to scale up.

“It is intended to provide an opportunity for those wishing to live a highly sustainable lifestyle, project a light touch on the environment, and who will be largely self-sufficient in terms of income, food and energy,” said Matthew Morris, a communications government officer. “Numbers of such developments are likely to remain small.”

The scheme has mostly attracted digital-era smallholders with a stubborn determination to return to a subsistence lifestyle in the rolling hills and valleys of rural Wales. And not to ruin the planet with a consumerist, throwaway lifestyle.

“We’ve known for 20 or 30 years now what we need to do to address the problem of climate change,” Vernon said from his half-built home.

“We don’t need more data. I could be doing something that demonstrates how we can address the problems.”

Vernon and his partner Thompson know about “the problems”. She holds a PhD in climate science, he has one in glaciology and is a climate modeller at Britain’s national weather service.

They decided it was time for action, not academia.

Eight months pregnant and elbow-deep in local clay plaster, Thompson said their home had to be zero carbon in construction.

It sits deep in Pembrokeshire, a coastal county in Wales that pioneered the green approach before it was adopted countrywide. –