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Buckingham Palace found to be biggest energy waster |
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13 Mar 2009, 3:54 PM
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Buckingham Palace, the Queen's London headquarters, has been branded Number One of the Capital's Top Ten worst energy wasters after a thermal imaging survey showed heat pouring through the closed curtained windows, the roof and cracks in the walls.
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A team of energy surveyors labelled the palace "shocking and appalling", the biggest "central heating radiator" in the city and gave it a score of 0 out of 10.
The Queen, whose Balmoral estate is to become the first in the Royal household to become self-sufficient in energy, has set up an energy-saving committee at Buckingham Palace to try to reduce consumption. It will have its work cut out - striking infra-red pictures capture the huge amount of energy escaping into the night sky during the survey in last month's big freeze.
"It appears the building is better at heating the air outside than inside," said the report by Navitron the renewable energy company.
Only last month the government allocated £millions in funding to help households cut their carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. But the Department of Environment is in second place in the league table alongside the Treasury, Ministgry of Defence and Portcullis House the MPs office block which opened in 2001. The building identified as London's most energy efficient by the thermal survey team was the HSBC tower block in Canary Wharf.
Buckingham Palace, despite being in darkness when the survey was carried out, appears completely lit-up in the pictures, as the thermal image shows heat instead of light. Ian Lucas, from Navitron, was astonished by the leaks at Buckingham Palace which last year spent £2.2 million on utility bills. "The construction of Buckingham Palace does not lend itself to easily turning it into an 'eco-home', and I can't imagine Her Majesty wanting to apply insulation panels either to the inside or the outside of the property," he said.
"However, the main concern for the palace should be its windows – something that could be improved without great expense. Clearly the windows are single-glazed, and I suspect that it would not be acceptable to replace with double-glazing, however improvements in draught-proofing on the windows, and perhaps adding secondary-glazing would significantly reduce heat losses and bills.
"Despite the heavy curtains draped inside during the thermal photography, almost all of the palace's windows demonstrated serious heat loss. Noticeably, some groups of windows look a lot cooler than others so Her Majesty does presumably turn down the thermostat in unused rooms."
The Top Ten - in order of most energy leaking - were
1. Buckingham Palace
2. DECC (Defra) [The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)]
3. Ministry of Defence
4. Horse Guards Barracks
5. Shell Building
6. Home Office
7. Houses of Parliament
8. Treasury
9. Portcullis House
10. MI6 HQ
11. Albert Hall
12. St James' Palace - home of the Prince of Wales, who this week will make his most apocalyptic warning about climate change, will be embarrassed to discover that St James's Palace, which is part of his London estate, is in 12th place in the survey of 170 buildings with a score of only five out of 10.
The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation tower block in Canary Wharf was found to be the most energy efficient building surveyed.
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