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Royal returns reach record highness

Wind power is the jewel in the British monarchy’s crown of assets

7/24/24 9:51AM

King Charles III of Britain is set to receive an extra £45 million (~$58 million) of public money — a more than 50% increase in his official annual income — as underlying profits from the Crown Estate hit £1.5 billion and net profits soared to a record £1.1 billion in the last financial year, thanks to a lift from offshore wind farms.

But what does that actually mean in the modern, post-feudal world?

What is the Crown Estate?

The Crown Estate is a legacy portfolio of land and property holdings owned by the British monarchy. Like in the days of yore, the Royal Family possesses big swathes of the UK’s agriculture, buildings, shoreline, seabed, and forestry — but today, the estate functions as an independent commercial business.

Why is it so profitable?

The entire portfolio is worth approximately £15.5 billion (~$20 billion), and includes a thriving marine sector. Indeed, the Crown Estate owns a large portion of Britain’s seabed for up to 12 nautical miles off the coast, and charges option fees to companies that want to reserve a slice for wind farms. Those fees helped “net revenue profit” (a somewhat confusing name) more than double year-on-year, per the trust’s latest annual report.

With 15GW of operational offshore wind capacity, the UK is the largest market for wind power outside of China; in fact, according to last month’s government energy report, wind is now contributing more to electricity generation than gas. As such, the Crown Estate’s marine business has been booming.

While the Crown Estate returns the majority of earnings back to the UK Treasury, 12% of its profits (cut down last year from 25%) are given to the monarchy to support “official duties” as part of the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant.

Royal flush: Even so, the Crown Estate isn’t the only income source that the monarch can tap into: the King also owns the lucrative duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.

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OpenAI: The New York Times is forcing us to turn over 20 million ChatGPT conversations

A judge in the The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI (and Microsoft) has ordered that the ChatGPT maker hand over the conversations of 20 million users to the Times’ lawyers, in an effort to find examples of copyright violations.

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

If the company’s final appeals to the court do not succeed, OpenAI explains that it will de-identify the chat logs, scrub any personally identifying information from the chats, and that technical experts hired by The New York Times’ legal team will be the only ones who can examine the data, which will be tightly controlled.

Fighting the New York Times’ invasion of user privacy

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

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The Senate just advanced a deal that could end the government shutdown

Prediction markets have done a U-turn as Washington looks to end the longest government shutdown in US history.

USA government shutdown, political crisis concept illustration

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Big four airlines sink as Transportation Secretary Duffy says parts of US airspace could close if shutdown continues

The US may close parts of its airspace as early as next week if the government shutdown continues, according to comments made by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Duffy said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The shutdown, which entered its 35th day on Tuesday, has fueled already problematic shortages of air traffic controllers. This week, airlines said 3.2 million passengers have faced delays or cancellations because of the shortages. Last week, about 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA agents received their first $0 paycheck amid the shutdown.

Shares of the big four US airlines all sank on Duffy’s comments, with United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines all down more than 5%.