Prince William meets Joe Biden in Boston ahead of Earthshot Prize awards ceremony
The royal couple hoped the Earthshot prize ceremony in Boston and a meeting with Joe Biden would get their US tour back on track after a difficult start, as ITV News Royal Editor Chris Ship reports
The Prince of Wales met Joe Biden on the final day of his US trip ahead of the Earthshot Prize awards ceremony.
He greeted the US president at the waterfront in Boston, at the end of the royal’s visit to John F Kennedy’s Presidential Library and Museum.
They held a 30-minute discussion which a Kensington Palace spokesman described as “warm, friendly and substantive”.
Mr Biden was heard asking: "“Where’s your top coat?” at the beginning of their exchange.
The Kensington Palace spokesman said the president was keen to learn about Earthshot and some of the stories from the finalists, including the Great Bubble Barrier, a 2022 finalist in the Revive Our Oceans category.
The Princess of Wales wore a green dress at the Earthshot Prize awards, which honoured environmental pioneers, later on Friday.
Her gown was of the same hue as five innovative ideas that Prince William hopes will help repair the planet - and which were celebrated, and have been awarded £1 million in prize money to scale up their projects. The event staged this year in the US city of Boston is one of the highlights of the Prince of Wales’s official calendar and has been dubbed the future King’s “World Cup” moment by Hannah Jones, the Earthshot Prize’s chief executive officer.
Who were the winners?
Build a Waste-free World:
Notpa, A UK based company that makes biodegradable packaging from seaweed. The company made more than one million takeaway containers for Just Eat this year.
Clean Our Air:
Mukuru Clean Stoves, is a a female-founded start-up based in Kenya that provides cleaner-burning biomass stoves in Africa. The stoves they produce are fired by processed biomass made from wood, sugarcane and charcoal instead of solid fuels.
Protect and Restore Nature:
Kheyti, in India, Kaushik Kappagantulu's Greenhouse-in-a-Box helps to increase yields on small farms in India
Revive Our Oceans:A woman-led effort to create a new generation of indigenous rangers in Australia.
Fix Our Climate:
44.01, The project transforms atmospheric carbon into rock in Oman in the Middle East. It offers a low-cost and safe alternative to storing carbon.
Celebrities who walked the green carpet at the awards ceremony included Hollywood actor Rami Malek, former England football captain David Beckham, while artists performing on the night included Billie Eilish, Annie Lennox, Ellie Goulding and Beyonce proteges Chloe x Halle.
Malek, who presented the Fix Our Climate award, spelled out the environmental dilemma facing the planet before the ceremony, saying: “This is the greatest crisis that we are facing in our lifetime and it will probably be the greatest crisis that future generations are facing as well. “But hopefully we can lessen that challenge for them by the actions we take right now. “The innovation, the intelligent minds that are coming together to make changes and are being rewarded by the Earthshot Prize tonight will have a massive impact on what the world will look like.” Organisers of Earthshot have implemented a number of green policies, from encouraging guests to dress sustainably by wearing vintage clothing or recycling outfits for future use, to ensuring the plants and flowers on display are grown locally.
The awards ceremony was the culmination of a three-day visit by the royal couple to Boston which has been overshadowed by the race row that saw William’s godmother Lady Susan Hussey resign as a royal aide after she repeatedly questioned a prominent black British-born domestic abuse charity boss about where she “really came from”. A trailer promoting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix docu-series was released on Thursday, with the timing interpreted by some royal commentators as a snub to William and Kate.
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