Were a reminder needed – and surely it is not – Formula One having to cancel the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix last week was definitive evidence that the climate emergency is no abstract inconvenience but very real and now close to home in the sport’s European heartland.
F1 comes with a carbon cost that contributes to the rising floodwaters that put paid to the Imola race weekend and the sport has long been a conspicuous polluter as it crisscrosses the globe. Now boasting a comprehensive plan to address it, climate experts are asking the question of F1: is it enough?
F1 rightly decided to cancel the race at Imola last Wednesday. The region has suffered from a devastating period of severe weather in May. Eight people died and 5,000 have been forced to abandon their homes. A local official described the volume of rainfall as a “catastrophic event that has never been registered before”.
F1 pulled the meeting, unwilling to add to the demands on the already stretched emergency services. With a history of avoiding at all costs cancelling a grand prix, this was a welcome move, bolstered by a €1m donation to the Emilia-Romagna relief fund.
The severe weather – relentless, heavy rain leading to flooding and landslides – is believed to have been induced by the climate emergency. To which F1 knows it is a major contributor. It undertook an assessment of its carbon footprint in 2018, concluding that it had emitted 256,551 tons of carbon across the season. However, only 0.7% was from the racing itself. The vast majority came from logistics: air, road and sea freight amounted to 45% and personnel travel to 27.7%. Two-thirds of an immense footprint is effectively the price of keeping the show on the road.
In 2019, F1 committed to a net zero carbon target by 2030 and has vigorously pursued it. It has committed to developing a 100% sustainable fuel that can also be used in road cars to service the 1.2bn expected to still be running internal combustion engines in 2030, a potential gamechanger for global emissions. It has also committed to a minimum 50% reduction in its own carbon emissions by 2030.
To that end, steps have been made. F1 and the teams have shifted their offices and factories to renewable energy. The sport has reduced the number of staff travelling, shifting much of its broadcasting operation to operate from Kent rather than at race meetings. It uses lighter and more efficient air freight methods and modern aeroplanes and has increased the use of sea freight and local hubs for storage of equipment. Contracts with promoters are being worked through to rationalise the calendar and reduce the number of flights required.
Yet for many climate change experts the elephant very much remains in the room looming ominously over that 2030 goal. As things stand if F1 reaches its aim of reducing emissions by 50% the sport admits it will have no choice but to offset what would remain a very significant level of carbon.
Toby Miller is a visiting professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has studied and written extensively on sport and the environment. His 2018 book Greenwashing Sport was critical of the claim of reaching net carbon zero while using offsetting.
“I am concerned it will be a displacement,” he says. “The advances made in jet fuel transformation are nowhere near what is required in order to make air travel of the kind that F1 engages in any sense manageable, feasible or credible. Even if they manage to reduce massively the other parts of their carbon footprint, travel is always going to be the problem.
“The real nettle to be grasped is international travel and not just of people but of heavy machinery across the globe for a season that lasts almost 10 months a year. That needs to be the headline question.”
F1 has not shied away from addressing the problem and Ellen Jones, F1’s head of environment, social and governance, conceded that it was a major issue facing the sport. F1 was considering that at a certain point it could still only offset emissions, yet their form and credibility remain a still undecided fixture for the future.
“When it comes to unavoidable emissions after we have finished our investment in reduction, that is really important,” she says. “My response to offsets is clear. We are focused on carbon reduction, we understand that as we get closer to 2030 that offsets the balance to zero of unavoidable emissions will need to be reviewed.
“So we are watching it to ensure there is credibility when we make those purchases, but F1 can also give back and support the development of technical offsets through technology. It’s a really important point that people focus on reduction first. For unavoidable emissions we will have to look at what credible carbon removal looks like.”
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Just what that looks like remains a notoriously contentious subject, but it should be noted that this is an issue far from confined to F1. As a global sport that consumes fossil fuels as part of its process of competition it is a lightning rod as a contributor to climate breakdown. Yet it is far from the worst offender. Climate scientists have long railed against greater villains.
Conservative estimates put the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 as having a carbon footprint of 2.3m to 3m tons and last year’s Qatar World Cup ranging from the widely discredited Fifa claim of 3.6m tons to up to the 10m tons cited by environmentalist academics. Either event easily surpasses more than 10 years of F1. In both cases the figures are endlessly muddied because of the use of offsetting to balance the books.
Just as it is for F1 this, it is argued, cannot be considered a means of reaching net zero carbon. Asher Minns, a longtime academic and now executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, praised F1’s efforts but was unequivocal that it still faced a profound problem.
“I really welcome that F1 is strategising what it can do about its significant emissions,” he says. “The first step in anything is realising your impact, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. They look to have done some really very good in-depth analysis, as you would expect from engineers their plan is a serious proposition.
“But the question on offsetting is, does it genuinely reduce emissions and store them away from the atmosphere forever? The answer for nearly all offsetting is, no it doesn’t. Then there is the moral dilemma of offsetting. There is only no emissions. Putting emissions in the atmosphere and then saying you have sucked them out is not the same as not having emissions. You either polluted or you didn’t, offsetting is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Pollution remains pollution then is the existential quandary facing F1 and every sport at this vital moment. Jones, however, insists F1 is fully committed to doing it properly, albeit with a methodology that remains as yet undecided, the big question mark now hanging over the sport as it counts down to 2030.
“We will need to invest in offsets and we will review those very closely,” she says. “The market itself is very immature and we will continue to monitor it so when we do invest in it we ensure it is the outcome we want which is a true carbon removal.”
These are difficult times that pose difficult questions for all sports and as the climate scientists have shown, with emissions there is as yet no comfortable solution as succour for the cost of continuing competition. F1’s approach shows there are no easy answers.