Royal Household versus the National Portrait Gallery 2025
UK's exclusive Cost Comparison Report
The first of 3 Times articles from our 2025 UK £4.8 Billion Energy Cost Comparison report is online today.
Here is the main text for those without a Times login.
The royal palaces paid the equivalent of 43.3p per kWh for electricity last year — far above the energy price cap, which varied between 22p and 25p per kWh over the same period, although households would also have to pay a standing charge of as much as 60p per day.
The King didn’t get a much better rate on gas at 7.7p per kWh, compared with a price of 5.5-6.3p/kWh on the price cap.
By comparison, the National Portrait Gallery, where more than a dozen pictures of King Charles’s ancestors hang, pays less than half as much for electricity and a third less for gas.
In total, the royal household, which runs Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Clarence House, St James’s Palace and Kensington Palace, spent £2.6 million on electricity and £1.1 million on gas.
The data, obtained by Box Power, a not-for-profit energy consultancy, show that the royals’ various properties burnt through six million kWhs of electricity last year, enough to power more than 2,200 standard-sized homes or a town about the size of Billinghurst in West Sussex.
Buckingham Palace, which has 77,000 square metres of floorspace across its 775 rooms, is thought to be the most expensive royal residence to heat and light, using more than 40 per cent of the entire royal estate’s power.
Despite this, the figures show electricity consumption at the royal palaces grew by 5 per cent last year, although gas consumption fell 1 per cent and is down 27 per cent on four years ago.
Corin Dalby, chief executive of Box Power, which conducts an annual survey of the prices paid by government departments, councils and high-profile institutions, said: “The Palace got it wrong by buying high post-invasion and bought for too long, meaning they paid more than 99 per cent of those in our survey.
“Over the last four years, our reports have consistently revealed that many organisations have paid significantly more than necessary. A notable exception this year is the National Portrait Gallery, which, despite having lower energy usage, seems to have leveraged greater economies of scale and expertise through the government’s centralised purchasing.
“This suggests that His Majesty could have potentially saved up to £3 million on energy over the past four years had the palaces secured similar pricing.”