Prince Charles' cost to taxpayers falls by half

Prince Charles' funding from British taxpayers fell by almost 50 per cent during the last financial year.
The prince's annual accounts showed today that his income from the government and a royal grant was 1.1 million pounds in the fiscal year that ended March 31, down from 2.1 million pounds a year earlier.
The decrease is largely due to lower travel costs as countries the prince visited often picked up the bill.
Travel spending fell by 49 per cent despite the prince attending 657 official engagements, 154 of them overseas.
Charles receives most of his income from properties and investments on his 136,000-acre Duchy of Cornwall estate. That income rose 4 per cent to 19 million pounds, and Charles paid more than 4.4 million pounds in tax.

The accounts also demonstrated Charles' continual success in reducing his household's carbon footprint since beginning measuring and reporting its greenhouse gas emissions in 2007.
Total emissions at the prince's residences fell by 21 per cent through a combination of energy-efficiency measures, on-site renewable energy generation and the purchase of "green" electricity and gas.
Highgrove House, the family home of Charles and his wife, Camilla, generates more than 40 per cent of its own energy through biomass, heat pumps and solar panels.