Prince Charles is being mocked on Twitter after revealing his Aston Martin is powered by cheese and wine during a wide-ranging interview on the environment in which he also expressed his sympathies for Greta Thunberg and eco-idiots such as Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.
Speaking to the BBC in Prince George’s Wood, an arboretum Charles created in the gardens of his house on the Balmoral estate, the senior royal explained how he had his classic blue 1970 Aston Martin – gifted to him by the Queen for his 21st birthday in 1969 – converted so it runs on ‘surplus English white wine’ and whey from cheese production.
The car now runs on a fuel called E85, which is made up of 85 per cent bioethanol and 15 per cent unleaded petrol. By blending petrol with ethanol, motorists don’t need as much fossil fuel, which reduces carbon emissions and allows the vehicle to run ‘cleaner’.
However, Twitter users were quick to mock the Prince of Wales’ revelation – with many people pointing out that they ‘also run on cheese and wine’ while others asked if this means Charles is ‘technically drink-driving’. Some questioned the meaning of ‘surplus wine’ while others checked if it was an April Fool’s gag, posted: ‘Did I hear that right? Prince Charles has converted his Aston Martin to run on white wine and cheese?? Is it April 1…?’
Most chose to completely ignore most of the rest of the Duke of Cornwall’s astonishing interview with the Corporation, in which he expressed his sympathies for the eco-zealots who have been blocking Britain’s busiest roads for the past month to pressure the Government to make homes ‘environmentally-friendly’ – but suggested ‘it isn’t helpful to do it in a way that alienates people’.
Charles, a longstanding environmental campaigner, also said he is ‘deeply worried’ about the future of the planet, accused humans of ‘over exploiting’ and damaging nature, and admitted he understands the frustrations of young people and climate activists such as Thunberg because they feel like ‘nobody listens’. He also revealed how he doesn’t eat meat and fish on two days a week and dairy on one day.
The Prince of Wales even took aim at electric cars in his interview, warning that they are too expensive and sharing his worries about materials for their batteries. He also called for hydrogen to be used more. However, scientists have previously noted that hydrogen cars are less efficient than electric cars, partially because of the energy needed in breaking down the gas.
Charles also revealed his frustration at criticism he has received for his comments on nature in the past. Writing for the Mail in August this year, the prince urged business leaders to go green or the planet is ‘done for’, adding: ‘We now have no alternative – we have to do all we possibly can in the short time left to us to avoid the enormous climate catastrophe that has already begun to show its face in the most terrifying ways.’
In September last year, Charles called for a military-style response to the threat of climate change reminiscent of the US Marshall Plan to rebuild post-war Europe, saying the world was facing a catastrophe. And during a 1986 interview, Charles infamously remarked that he talks to trees to help them grow, saying: ‘I just come and talk to the plants, really – very important to talk to them. They respond.’
The prince told the BBC: ‘I don’t know where it came from but it’s what I really minded about. I mind about balance and harmony because if you push things too far, you will always create an equal and opposite reaction, which is exactly what’s happening. But in the meantime, if you’re the idiot who suggests all this, you’re accused of being an idiot.
‘I was accused of being anti-science. It wasn’t much fun, as you can imagine, and then because I suggested there were better ways of doing things, I was accused of interfering and meddling.
‘Having been ridiculed for so long, they suddenly all want me to help convene them. Because I haven’t got an axe to grind I’m only keen to get the damn thing sorted.’
Speaking about Thunberg and other climate activists, Charles said: ‘All these young people feel nothing is ever happening so of course they’re going to get frustrated. I totally understand because nobody would listen and they see their future being totally destroyed.’
Discussing recent protests, he also added: ‘I understand why they go out but it isn’t helpful to do it in a way that alienates people. I totally understand the frustration. The difficulty is how do you direct that frustration in a way that is more constructive than destructive.’
Prince Charles expressed his sympathy for groups like XR and activists like Greta Thunberg in a wide-ranging BBC interview
Charles explained how he had his Aston Martin converted so it runs on English wine and whey from cheese production
Prince Charles is being mocked on Twitter after revealing his Aston Martin is powered by cheese and wine
A highly amused expression on the face of the Prince of Wales at the wheel of his Aston Martin in the 1960s
Pictured: Prince Charles seen driving his Aston Martin back in 2000. He has had the car converted since
Pictured: Prince Charles in his blue Aston Martin next to Diana at Windsor, Berkshire in July 1981
Prince Charles smells the earth where he plants an endangered Bulian tree in Jambi Province, Indonesia, in 2008
EXPLAINED: POWERING A CAR ON WINE AND CHEESE
Explained: how a car can be powered on ‘cheese and wine’
In 2008 Prince Charles asked Aston Martin if it would be possible to convert his Aston Martin DB6 to run on a more environmentally friendly fuel source.
They turned to a firm called Green Fuels, based on Gloucester, who set about sourcing local produce and food by-products to make bioethanol.
The team created a new version of a long-standing fuel called E85, that is made up of 85 per cent bioethanol and 15 per cent unleaded petrol. The source material for the bioethanol is where the wine and cheese come in.
Green Fuels turned to a local vineyard and purchased 8,000 litres of surplus white wine – paying just 1p per litre for the unsold tipple in 2008. They ran it through their distillery and boiled off the 11 per cent alcohol, condensed it and removed any remaining water from the fluid.
This left them with hundreds of litres of pure ethanol, topped up by alcohol taken from fermented whey – this was collected as a by-product of local cheesemaking, keeping to the local sourcing of raw materials.
They then handed the fuel back to Aston Martin, who were able to tune the vehicle to accept the fuel – the final version of which is mixed with petrol.
Of the car, which Prince Charles had owned since the 1970s, he felt that if he wanted to keep it on the road he had an ‘environmental and moral’ obligation to modernise the engine to become less gas-guzzling.
The final fuel, E85, is similar to the E10 petrol currently rolling out to UK forecourts, but instead of a majority petrol (E10 is 10% ethanol, 90% petrol), E85 is mostly ethanol.
By blending petrol with ethanol you need less fossil fuel, which in turn reduces carbon emissions and allows the vehicle to run cleaner.
Prince Charles on Greta Thunberg and activists like XR
Prince Charles said he understands the frustrations of young people and climate activists because they feel like ‘nobody listens’.
‘All these young people feel nothing is ever happening so of course they’re going to get frustrated. I totally understand because nobody would listen and they see their future being totally destroyed.
‘The point is, people should really notice how despairing so many young are.’
Discussing recent protests, he added: ‘I understand why they go out but it isn’t helpful to do it in a way that alienates people.
‘I totally understand the frustration. The difficulty is how do you direct that frustration in a way that is more constructive than destructive.’
Recalling his own encounter with his Extinction Rebellion, the royal recalled how the group staged a sit-in at his Highgrove estate before leaving a letter praising him for his past comments on the climate.
Prince Charles on his green efforts
In the interview, Charles revealed how he doesn’t eat meat and fish on two days a week and dairy on one day.
Most remarkably, he explained how he had his Aston Martin converted so it runs on surplus English wine and whey from cheese production. The car, which he has had for 51 years, now runs on a fuel called E85 – made up of 85% bioethanol and 15% unleaded petrol.
Describing his diet, he added: ‘That’s one way to do it. If more people did that it would reduce a lot of the pressure on the environment.’
Charles went on to list several other green measures he’d taken in recent years as he called on governments to take action.
He said he had switched the heating of Birkhall to biomass boilers, using wood chips from trees felled in the estate’s forest.
The Prince has also installed solar panels at Clarence House, his London residence, and on the farm buildings of Highgrove.
There are also heat pumps at some of his properties and a hydroelectric turbine in the river that runs beside Birkhall.
Prince Charles on being called an ‘idiot’ for speaking on green issues
‘I don’t know where it came from but it’s what I really minded about. I mind about balance and harmony because if you push things too far, you will always create an equal and opposite reaction, which is exactly what’s happening.
‘But in the meantime, if you’re the idiot who suggests all this, you’re accused of being an idiot. I was accused of being anti-science.
‘It wasn’t much fun, as you can imagine, and then because I suggested there were better ways of doing things, I was accused of interfering and meddling.
‘Having been ridiculed for so long, they suddenly all want me to help convene them. Because I haven’t got an axe to grind I’m only keen to get the damn thing sorted.’
Prince Charles on world leaders and the Cop26 climate summit
He criticised world leaders ahead of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, branding their efforts as ‘just talk’, adding: ‘The problem is trying to get action on the ground which I’ve been trying to do for the last 40 years.’
The prince added that the conference was ‘a last chance saloon’ and said it would be ‘a disaster’ if the world did not come together to tackle climate change.
He said: ‘I mean it’ll be catastrophic. It is already beginning to be catastrophic because nothing in nature can survive the stress that is created by these extremes of weather.’
Asked if the UK Government, as the host of Cop26, was doing enough to fight climate change, Charles replied: ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’
He also expressed his frustration at how business executives still don’t give environmental issues enough priority and said not enough young people have ‘got to the top’ to make a difference.
He said he understands the frustrations of young people and climate activists because they feel like ‘nobody listens’
Speaking about Greta Thunberg and other climate activists, Charles said: ‘All these young people feel nothing is ever happening so of course they’re going to get frustrated’
Charles added: ‘We still have in place endless perverse subsidy regimes. We still have subsidies for insane agri-industrial approaches to farming which cause huge damage and contribute enormously to emissions. And we still have perverse subsidies for fishing in the oceans causing again mammoth damage, trawling up the bottom, deep trawling. It’s crazy.’
Charles is due to attend a series of events at Cop26, alongside the Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Prince Charles on nature
Discussing nature, he explained: ‘We are damaging nature by not understanding how much we depend on everything that nature provides. And also not understanding, or having been somehow trained to believe, that nature is a separate thing from us that we can exploit.
‘I tried to say in other areas, years ago, that there is a sense of the sacred. Because when you think about Earth, the miracle of this sitting in the middle of the vastness of space. Yet somehow, everything works.
‘How is that possible? It can’t just be random chance. If you look into the way nature operates, the universal principles, which Islam understood so well from the Greeks and Egyptians, is that underlying everything are fundamental patterns. It’s the most extraordinary thing the way the planets revolve.
‘What we’re doing with our own economy is to disrupt nature’s economy.’
His interview triggered intense debate online, with many taking to social media to express their shock at his comments.
One person joked: ‘I think Prince Charles is confusing his beloved Aston Martin with my dad.’
A supporter said: ‘Prince Charles has been talking about this for years. Way ahead of his time.’
However, another person, pointing out flights taken by the prince, wrote: ‘I’m not being lectured on Climate Change by Prince Charles.’
His interview triggered intense debate online, with many taking to social media to express their shock at his comments
Charles has long been a proponent for tackling environmental issues – though his attempts have garnered controversy. In 2019, he was accused of promoting disproven and dangerous medical treatments in his new position as patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy.
The Prince of Wales is a long-time supporter of homeopathy and has used his royal position to try to get it widely accepted. This is despite some homeopaths operating in the UK claiming to cure autism and offering alternatives to traditional vaccinations.
Homeopathy is a branch of medicine that treats ailments using extremely diluted doses of natural substances. It is known as a complementary or alternative approach because it is different from traditional Western medicine.
Charles has previously lobbied ministers to use more alternative medicine such as homeopathy on the NHS because he ‘couldn’t bear people suffering unnecessarily’. In a letter to then Health Secretary Alan Johnson in September 2007, he said an ‘anti-homeopathy campaign’ was damaging the health service.
In the letter, he said he ‘couldn’t bear to see people suffering… when a complementary approach could make the difference’, with a focus on depression, back pain, eczema and irritable bowel syndrome.
The prince has said he will not campaign on issues such as homeopathy when king.
‘I’m not that stupid,’ he told the BBC. ‘I do realise it is a separate exercise being sovereign. I understand entirely how that should operate. I’ve tried to make sure whatever I’ve done has been non-party political, but it’s vital to remember there’s only room for one sovereign at a time, not two.’
In 1986, he was also widely ridiculed after he revealed that he talked to his plants, claiming that they ‘respond’. In 1970, he warned about the problems of plastic waste, chemicals being discharged into rivers and air pollution caused by factories, cars and planes.
Since his speech on February 19, 1970, to the Countryside Steering Committee for Wales, Charles has worked to develop solutions to climate change and highlighted issues like overfishing and the threat to the world’s rainforests.
Activists from Insulate Britain are planning to cause more misery by yet again blocking major roads in a series of sit-down protests on Wednesday, it has been revealed
Charles is due to attend a series of events at Cop26, alongside the Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The 12-day summit aims to secure more ambitious commitments to limit global warming to well below 2C with a goal of keeping it to 1.5C compared with pre-industrial levels. The conference has been billed as crucial to delivering the goals of the Paris Accord which, when it was agreed in 2015, recognised countries needed to significantly increase action to cut greenhouse gases.
His comments come after weeks of chaos caused by Insulate Britain blocking motorways and other busy roads across the country.
The group is threatening a fresh wave of mayhem if the Government does not agree to its demands. It plans to cause more misery by yet again blocking major roads in a series of sit-down protests on Wednesday.
Activists will warn Boris Johnson that he has ten days to commit to their ultimatum on home insulation before they ‘unleash hell’ on innocent drivers simply trying to get to work or see loved ones.
The Prime Minister plans to hit the activists with huge fines and up to six months in jail with new powers dubbed ‘Asbos for crusties’. But they remain undeterred and have pledged to ‘create a whirlwind’ in their bid to force the Government to insulate all social housing by 2025.
They want to cause as much chaos as possible in the run-up to the COP26 summit in Glasgow next month, with one ringleader saying it would be the ‘icing on the cake’ if protesters were sent to prison on remand.