Stunning Lawrence Stroll revelation raises questions over Aston Martin’s climate mission

An investigation has found that Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll took 1,512 flights since the start of 2022, going against the team’s pledge to reduce its carbon footprint.

The investigation was done by the British newspaper the Guardian and found that Stroll was one of 200 celebrities whose aircraft have flown for a combined total of 11 years since 2022.

The news came in the same year that Aston Martin’s F1 team received the three-star FIA rating for environmental sustainability recognition.

Lawrence Stroll flies in the face of Aston Martin pledge

With Formula 1 increasingly in the spotlight for its effect on the environment, the sport has pledged to become carbon net zero by 2030 and with all 10 teams working to reduce their individual output.

Aston Martin earlier this year suggested they were “driving change industry-wide” with their efforts but this has now been soured by the report that their team owner Stroll made flights as short as 15 minutes in the space of just over a year.

According to the Guardian, private jets belonging to 200 celebrities, CEOs, oligarchs and billionaires made 44,739 journeys, the equivalent of the total emissions of almost 40,000 Britons.

The almost 300 jets produced an estimated 415,518 tonnes of CO2, substantially more than the 256,000 tonnes produced by F1 in 2019.

Stroll in particular was one of the worst offenders and, of those investigated, the Canadian billionaire made the most journeys of 15 minutes or less.

The Guardian also further investigated exactly where Stroll was flying to and found that some of his common journeys were from his home in Switzerland to the Aston Martin HQ near Silverstone, trips to Monaco and trips to the private island Mustique where Stroll reportedly owns a house.

PlanetF1.com reached out to the Aston Martin F1 team but they declined to comment.

Other members of the F1 paddock also own private jets including Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso. Lewis Hamilton used to own a private jet but sold it in 2019.

Stroll was not the only high-profile celebrity investigated. The rock band the Rolling Stones are the owners of one of the most polluting jets on the list with their Boeing 767 emitting an estimated 5,046 tonnes of CO2.

This is the equivalent of someone taking 1,763 return flights from London to New York City in economy class.

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Russian oligarchs also feature heavily and were responsible for 30,701 tonnes of CO2.

The figures were based on flight data from the volunteer-run database OpenSky, and used publicly available emissions calculators from Conklin & de Decker and Eurocontrol to estimate fuel consumption and emissions. It is possible that the figures are conservative, due to limited coverage outside the US and Europe.

The approximately 27,793 flights in the dataset for the year 2022, responsible for an estimated 257,673 tonnes of CO2, represent only 0.5% of the estimated 5.3m private flights that year.

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