Carbon footprint of live events and festivals.

[adam2]

This report refers to the often substantial carbon emissions of such events.

 

BBC report.

 

 

Ceasing use of private aircraft, encouraging train travel to venues, hiring sound and lighting equipment rather than transporting same huge distances, and energy efficiency in general are mentioned.

I thought that 1,000 kw or more of incandescent Par cans was a requirement ! and a similar loading of incandescent festoon and halogen site floods for amenity lighting.

 

Favouring venues that are energy efficient was also suggested.

[paulears]

I'm afraid for me, the pressure for carbon neutrality has persuaded me that some people demand progress at a rate that is impossible.I understand the reasons, but I'm beginning to resent the people who initiate these plans.

 

The minute I now see 'University Study', 'Professor" and the BBC in one cluster I know it will be shady in the extreme - the intelligence and evidence gathering, the conclusions and of course the BBC's cherry picking by media graduates with no experience or history.

 

Bike parking just made me smile. The notion of no international touring will be next. There will be a distance from your home, over which you cannot travel. Clearly, all festivals will need to be shifted to a geographically convenient location. That will be disputed by the Scots, considered unfair by the Welsh and Irish and like everything nowadays, history sacrificed for trendyism.

 

NOBODY likes the locations, the travelling, the mud, and of course the expense - not the performers, workers or audience - but festivals are what people like - a community event. Turning them into something less is plain nonsense.

 

Entertainment has already chopped huge holes in the footprint - now they want to ban headliners flying in from Australia and making them come by train?

[Junior8]

I was also slightly amused by a Green Fair mounted yesterday here in the middle of nowhere approached only by steep pedestrian unfriendly hills and with no public transport links within, I suppose, four miles. Nearest rail Petersfield 7.3 miles.

 

How Green was that?

 

It makes Boomtown look Urban.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Junior8

[kerry davies]

The research was mostly done in 2007 by Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute for Alison Tickell and her Julie's Bicycle so Manchester Uni has been repetitive. There is also some fascinating research about the "Not Touring Tour" when Prince did 21 nights carbon saving at the Dome. Such a significant part of his audience flew in long haul that he could have had chauffeur driven limos and Lear jets for everyone and still been less carbon wasteful.

 

Outdoor events have been all over this like a rash since we first discovered we could use punters giving us pedal power for free. And that's the key, lower carbon means lower cost when done right. My mates and former DJ's started out with Danny Rinky Dink and moved to the Freds' Axjet PA and Rainbow Dragon then to Moments from Machynlleth. Those guys were webcasting from the Big Mud in 1996 via Cardiff University through mobile phones under 12V lights and low voltage PA. Oddly enough that was Daddy G of Massive Attack as well. He used to hang out at Bubblejet gigs in Bristol with DJ Giles and his "Fluffy Corner" of LV inflatables.

 

Somewhere out there are the next generation who need encouragement but what the Donga's learned in the 90's is that since before the Henge people have got together in the summer between growth and harvest and danced up and down on God's green earth and whatever happens their primal instinct will find a way to scratch that itch. Thatcher tried to stop it, the puritans tried, the Black Death tried and all failed. Don't believe me? Check out the dancing peasants Brueghel painted.

[Jivemaster]

Sadly the days are long gone when people were satisfied with local performers, the audience now demands headliners and not every audience has a headline artiste within walking distance, and not everyone wants the same headliner every year.

Headline artistes are expensive because the audience expects them to have exotic costumes and exotic lifestyles, which need supporting by fee income. The way to reduce carbon footprint is to reduce the travel and to reduce the content and have a festival every ten miles so that everyone can walk there and back.

 

Having seen a firework display company demonstrate that the show CO2 output was minimal compared to the thousand personal cars used for say 20 miles each way for the audience, probably there is a lot to be said for taking the show to the crowd.

[paulears]

I’m looking forward to sizewell 3 which will be great for the local economy, despite the obvious road congestion. A speculative rail terminal in my town next to the harbour looks set to be used taking lots of lorry movements away. It seems popular to target people’s entertainment rather than other areas. I doubt practically every statistic and official data source now I’m afraid.

[ImagineerTom]

The article seems to be mashing together arena gigs and festivals and talking about them incorrectly in spite of that. In the festivals we are involved in the #1 headliner on a stage might be bringing a chunk of their own production but EVERY other performer will be using the house rig - if they're a DJ then they don't even bring their own decks! I don't have much faith that the report or its recommendations are viable if they've taken the data from a global touring band who mostly do one-off gigs crossing the globe and extrapolated that to normal festival setups.

[Junior8]

Agreed but if you wanted to put together a theoretical environmentally unfriendly event surely you'd very likely come up with something very like the average three day festival. I am talking about the environment in its widest sense not the limited carbon agenda we hear so much about. I am thinking of one which turns a very pleasant part of the countryside into something that looks like a POW camp, causes incredible traffic and transport dislocation for those wanting to go about their normal business, and ends with a fingertip search of the ground after the get out before its safe to put the sheep back in. That's ignoring the fact that 'revellers' leave the area with so much refuse it would need a new landfill site.

 

I have no doubt that with a bit of effort you could cut the carbon footprint of the event itself to satisfy any target - but that doesn't seem to me to be the point.

 

I am neither for or against the things, though their appeal has always perplexed me, I just wonder if the right environmental questions are ever asked.

 

 

 

[ImagineerTom]

But there are already solutions to all those problems. There are festivals on sites with much better drainage so less to no mud. There are festivals that have no onsite camping thus ensuring punters are either living within commuter distance or staying in hotels. There are festivals spread across the country so that punters don't have to travel (Reading & Leeds for example). There are festivals that have huge eco energy elements. ALL festivals have made dramatic changes to consumables (reusable cups, composting cutlery, single use plastic banned on site) to minimise waste, ALL camping festivals have quite sophisticated camping equipment recycling / upcycling / reusing schemes in place, and ALL festivals already have far reaching and highly effective integration with public transport systems. Of course half these things don't apply to arena gigs and the big giveaway is where one of their suggestions is bicycle parking at the gig - that tells you that they are mashing stadium gigs and festivals together under one report when they are completely different beasts; there's many reasons why adding bike storage to a festival site is a waste of time and resources...

[Simon Lewis]

I have long left the world of Environmental Impact Assessments, but one of the few things that I can remember was that it is easily possible to slant a 'cradle to grave' impact assessment, simply by carefully choosing which aspects of the contributing factors you choose to focus on.

 

We can argue over what is desirable, what is possible and what is achievable. However, I doubt that we can simply carry on as we have done - the tide has turned beyond just a few hippies, tree huggers and eco warriors doing their thing in a field somewhere.

[mac.calder]

There is no argument that large scale touring is/was incredibly wasteful. Festivals and smaller/local events much less so.

 

In the before times, it was cheaper to pack a show in it's entirety into a cargo jet or 2 and pay for the extra avgas than it was to locally hire and rig from scratch - since you were already doing that for set, re rigging and adjusting shows for local stock availability was not worth it. Numerous big name tours would fly US to Australia with basically their entire rig - bar a few basic bits and pieces. It was just an accepted fact. Especially where there were highly mechanised sets, performer flying and tight integration of set and technology.

 

Transit - absolutely an issue at so many venues world wide. Designed for cars and not serviced well by mass transit. There are arenas in the US with car parks an order of magnitude larger than the stadium they surround.

 

Catering etc - I think it's slowly getting better. Unfortunately, safety and security policies (no rigid/glass/aluminium bottles etc) at a lot of stadia are creating huge amounts of waste that is often incorrectly recycled - but it's getting better. Sadly,most venues are not making use of their huge surface area and high vantage for alternative power (even it if was just to look after base load - interior lighting, mechanical and hydraulic services etc) and even new arena/stadiums are constrained by their primary focus (get punters to seat, handle huge surges of people, sell overpriced beer) which means that typical green engineering often goes out the window (highly controlled air circulation, thermal insulation, energy recovery etc).

[richardash1981]

The most interesting thing about this news story (apart from the fact that Massive Attack are behind it - see kerry davies above) is that transport of the punters is included.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/dec/05/massive-attack-plan-festival-powered-by-100-renewable-energy

bus links to Bristol station won't fix everything, but at least they are starting to talk about it (hopefully to GWR and other operators to make sure there are trains to be caught!).

[kerry davies]

We used to bus in the audiences for Grad and Soc Balls over 20 years ago. That works well with a student audience which is geographically concentrated. Whether it makes a big enough difference when punters have to gather at "collection points" is debatable. It certainly won't work when they turn up with rucksacks and tents etc for overnight stays. Adding a few thousand extra travellers to scheduled services is enough of a problem and lessons need learning from events like Six Nations rugby in Cardiff and the vast car parking and shuttle bus services for Ryder Cups.

To source enough drivers for the Ryder at Celtic Manor they had to shut all the schools in Gwent and give the kids a holiday. I had warned them a couple of years in advance. 

 

 

[Junior8]

On 12/30/2023 at 9:43 PM, richardash1981 said:

bus links to Bristol station won't fix everything, but at least they are starting to talk about it (hopefully to GWR and other operators to make sure there are trains to be caught!).

Back in 2018 I nearly didn’t make it to a funeral on the Thursday before Bank Holiday. Why? My train from Guildford to Reading arrived (from Gatwick way) full, not of passengers but of tents, rucksacks, folding chairs and other detritus being lugged by a few folk (and I mean a few folk) on their way to Reading Festival.   I forced my way on, apologies to the three or four I ruthlessly pushed aside, and travelled wedged against the door. But at least I got on which is more than can be said for a good many poor souls. Put simply many non mainline GWR services especially those from Portsmouth to Cardiff can hardly handle the normal demand. Unless GWR and X Country really strengthen services into BTM for those dates and festival goers take to the trains it will be, I suspect, carnage.

Edited January 1 by Junior8

[Stuart91]

In Glasgow, "football special" trains are still a thing when there are matches (and gigs) on at Hampden Park.

(Train is by far the easiest method of public transport from the city centre)

I'm sure there must be money to be made from running these services, or they'd have been cut long ago. 

Of course, packing supporters into trains like sardines is far more profitable that punters heading to a weekend festival with all their baggage.