National Trust unveils green energy plan to cut carbon footprint

It is planning to install more than 50 new boilers in mansions and larger buildings over the next five years, which will be powered by wood from its estates and their local areas.

Other home-grown energy schemes for the trust's building stock of 300 historic houses, offices, visitor centres and 360 holiday cottages include solar tiles, water wheels and wind turbines.

And efficiency measures such as sheep's wool insulation supplied by local upland farmers to keep Trust-owned cottages warm and the development of "low-carbon villages" aim to cut energy use by 20 per cent.

The drive to generate green power on-site at National Trust properties forms part of wider moves to "go local", which will see more control of budgets and management handed to individual sites.

It estimates the move to green energy will cut its carbon emissions by 45 per cent from 32,000 tonnes to 14,423 tonnes a year by the end of the decade.

And it will save money for the charity, which spends around 6m a year on electricity and heating.

The trust hopes most of the schemes will break even within the next decade, with some paying back the investment in as little as five years.

New incentives from the Government, under which people will be paid for the electricity and heat they generate from small scale energy systems, would help the technology pay its way.

But Dame Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust, said more ambition and investment by the Government was needed to boost small scale renewables.

A number of green schemes have already been installed at trust properties, including a wood pellet boiler at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire and a wind turbine at Middlehouse Farm in Malham, in the Yorkshire Dales.

The charity has also announced it is throwing open the doors of 300 of its properties for free for one weekend in March to give the British public a "spring bonus"

People will also be able to park for free at all of the car parks on March 20 and 21 which give access to miles of coastline and thousands of acres of countryside.