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| Volume 55 Number 12, May 31, 2025 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
Meeting net-zero requires a massive increase in offshore wind farms and a bonanza for the seabed landlord, the Crown Estate, reports have pointed out.
Decarbonising our power system by 2030 - the government's stated aim - involves building at least another 30GW of offshore wind generation. This is equivalent to building over 2,000 offshore wind turbines, each over 250m high.
Built out at sea, the majority will be connected to the sea floor using monopiles - enormous steel tubes driven into the seabed. A small number will be erected on the equivalent of very large barges and floated out to sea in places where the water is too deep for bottom fixing. All of them, however, will play their part in perhaps the greatest royal bonanza since the Civil List was established in 1760.
King of the sea
The Crown Estate owns the UK's seabed up to a distance of 12 nautical miles from the shore. But it also has the exclusive right to generate electricity from renewable energy sources throughout the entirety of the UK's territorial waters. Rather than exercise that right itself, it issues leases to wind farm developers and their associated cabling providers. And it charges a rather large amount of money for such leases. In 2021, BP paid just under £1bn to develop up to 3GW worth of offshore wind, implying that in the run-up to 2030 the Crown Estate could make over £10bn.
Although the revenue from the Crown Estate goes to the Treasury, not directly to King Charles III, the Treasury then calculates the level of the Sovereign Grant, which is the money the King gets. The level of the Sovereign Grant is set in part by the profits received from the Crown Estate. Traditionally, the Sovereign Grant includes 25 per cent of the profits of the Crown Estate. If the share of the profits received from the Crown Estate were to have been at this level, then King Charles would have raked in over a quarter of a billion pounds for being King of the sea. However, for 2025-26 our gracious King has requested that this be reduced to 12 per cent. Even including this reduction, the grant would total £132m, a £46m increase from 2024-25's £86m.
A net zero bonanza
Revenues from offshore wind will continue to rise. Even at a rate of 12 per cent, the King is likely to earn at least a half a billion pounds from this government's clean power plans. It can be said that this is only the beginning; a reasonable view is that to achieve net-zero, an additional 50GW of offshore wind will be required. This would make another £1.5bn of potential revenue for the Royal Family.
It is suggested that it was only last year that the Crown Estate started realising that explicitly gouging the billpayer was quite a bad look, and is seeking to provide value by helping developers with the planning process.
The King, of course a great advocate for action on environmental issues, is on course to be the recipient of a net-zero bonanza, while his subjects find themselves faced with further rising energy bills as a result of "decarbonisation". The government has committed to looking again at the level of the Sovereign Grant in the years to come. However, the reasonable conclusion is that the monarchy is an institution which has had its day and stands in the way of progress. Enough Is Enough when it comes to the monarchy also. Enough of the obscene wealth and privilege of the monarchy and all it represents. It is high time that sovereignty must be vested in the people!
(source: Politics Home)