Our innovative, forward-thinking King
King Charles as a young prince had the idea of creating Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (now re-branded National Landscapes).
He’s always been an innovative forward thinker and his recent unusual idea of using garden waste from his estates to create a fashion show of elegant gowns, is an example of his lateral thinking.
He has embraced sustaining nature and explores kinder living in a way that few leaders do sincerely.
In 2022 he installed a small array of solar panels on the roof of Sandringham House.
It seems to have been very successful as now the plan is to solar-power most of the Sandringham Estate with 2,000 panels sited on land near the sawmill, to support the ‘ongoing commitment to sustainability and promoting environmental practices’.
This is in line with our local Knepp Rewilding Estate where they are creatively working to address climate change by harnessing the power of sunshine and wind rather than using damaging fossil fuels.
If successful, their solar and wind farms would generate enough electricity to be stored in batteries and shared with local residents and businesses.
In contrast, extracted UK gas and coal simply goes onto the world market and is sold to the highest bidder, whoever and wherever that may be.
These huge solar systems will use the energy locally with a little spare electricity exported to the national grid.
But you don’t need a huge private estate of your own to provide enough electricity for your own home!
We have small terraced home with nine solar panels on our roof and a storage battery in the garage.
With our habit of using as little as possible of everything, we turn off things as soon as we can, keeping our bills manageable.
Sadly, our domestic woodburning stoves are about as polluting of our air as coal is.
A site with data collected by a London University, addresspollution.org, tells us that the air where our little house is has already broken three World Health recommended air pollution limits – you can put in your own post code.
And where do we get enough wood for everyone anyway
The scandal of importing wood from ancient forests in Canada and counting it as ‘green fuel’ to be burned in the UK was well documented on TV.
The least damaging solutions seem be wind and sun based, as they don’t add particulate matter directly into our local air.
Let’s hope that now the rain has finally stopped, we can warm ourselves with the sun in more ways than one – just like Sir Charles Burrell and HRH King Charles III!
Come and have a cuppa at our friendly Sussex Green Hub this Saturday – Community Fridge will be there from 10am.
Sussex Green Living’s mission is to educate and inspire communities to live an environmentally sustainable life, providing ideas and facilitating initiatives that have a positive impact on our planet and our pocket. Visit sussexgreenliving. org.uk for more information.