Versailles, le Louvre and countless châteaux… These monuments must be hard to heat and must be hard to lit. But what if a British castle showed the way to solve these problems ?
According to Treehugger, Howard Castle in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, installed a geothermal heat pump, insulation in the attics and LED light bulbs.
Subsequently, their annual heating and lighting bills went from over 70,000 £ (89,000 euros ) to £52,000 (66,000 euros). Regarding heating, the bill went from 40,000£ of oil to 14,000£ of electricity, which comes from a green energy supplier.
As the owner of the castle, Simon Howard stated in the Financial Times :
Installing this system made absolute sense.
We’re not burning any fossil fuel, we’re using a small amount of electricity from a green energy supplier to run the pump, and for every kilowatt the pump uses, four kilowatts of heat is generated. … We’ve now made a huge reduction in our carbon footprint, and we’re making substantial savings in heating and hot water costs.
How I wish the afore-mentioned landmarks did the same. What if all old monuments did the same ? No ” ugly ” solar panels, no wind turbines, just plain geothermal energy in a lake and energy efficiency. Here are low carbon solutions anybody can support…