Being a parasite can be a lucrative business—until that parasite starts to kill the host. Britain has the widest income inequality in all of Europe, so the time is long past for the parasite to find productive employment. In public, King Charles III has been saying for six months that the new “Crown Estate” profits should be returned to the British people—yet he has made no effort to return them and, in fact, has plans to use the money to buy two new helicopters. Meanwhile, the British media have been covering national “cost-of-living crisis,” in which many families can not cover the cost of bare necessities.
Britain’s “Crown Estate” is technically owned by the royal family, but controlled by the British government. On paper, all income from the Crown Estate goes to the government, and then the government gives back a percentage, called the “Sovereign Grant,” to the royal family to support their lavish lifestyles. Recently, the Sovereign Grant has been 25% of the Crown Estate income, but this year its profits have grown so dramatically that the amount given back to the royals will be only 12%—yet that still represents a 53% pay raise. The 2024 annual report of the Crown Estate is publicly available.
Over the centuries, the British royal family has benefitted from everything from human trafficking to war profiteering, but the new favorite cash cow is renewable energy—more specifically, offshore “wind farms.” Since at least 1989, Britain has been writing new laws to close coal-fired power plants, require renewable energy, and subsidize those renewables. Increasingly, the focus is to take advantage of the U.K.’s long coastline and develop offshore wind farms.
Suddenly the British seabed has become a valuable commodity. The fight over ownership of the British seabed started with the discovery of oil in Britain’s North Sea, which led to the 1964 Continental Shelf Act. That gave the British side of the North Sea to the Crown Estate. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 2004 Energy Act included the shoreline for the Crown Estate. Now there has been a frenzy to build ever more offshore wind farms, and each one signifies a lucrative leasing arrangement with the royal family’s Crown Estate. The royals’ vast real estate holdings in London have actually decreased in value since last year, but the offshore property has tripled in value.
