Ron Weasley might have never sat through a local council planning meeting, but Rupert Grint has spent roughly seven years doing exactly that. The actor who played Harry Potter's loyal best friend bought a sprawling estate in Hertfordshire back in 2009, and this year he has finally won permission to turn it into a far cry from Hogwarts: a 15-home carbon-neutral eco-village. Homes across the UK were responsible for around a fifth of the country's greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, according to a research briefing from the House of Commons Library. The Climate Change Committee, the government's independent climate advisory body, has said the UK will not meet its emissions targets without a near-complete overhaul of the housing stock. That larger picture is where Grint's new project comes into play.
A vicarage nobody wanted to buy
