Three planes, 270 tonnes of equipment, 800m2 of stage: The figures from Madonna’s massive free concert in Rio in May sounded like they came from another age.
These days, megastars are usually keener to claim a smaller footprint.
Coldplay, who just headlined Glastonbury Festival in England, recently announced they had cut carbon emissions on their world tour by 59 percent compared with their previous tour in 2016-2017.
Photo: AFP
They have taken innovative steps including solar panels and even a special dance floor that generates electricity from the movement of the audience.
Critics said that the band is still flying around on planes, and there was particularly opprobrium in 2022 when they announced a partnership with Finnish oil giant Neste Oyj.
Although Neste promised to help them use sustainable biofuels, the Transport and Environment campaign group said Coldplay were being used by the oil firm as “useful idiots for greenwashing.”
The overall impact of music festivals is hard to measure, but one study by the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute in 2010 estimated that Britain’s industry alone generated 540,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually.
Climate group Clean Scene found that the top 1,000 DJs took 51,000 flights in 2019, equivalent to 35,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.
As a result, all the big festivals have climate pledges and initiatives, from composting and carpooling schemes at Coachella in California to renewable energy usage at Glastonbury.
One festival that has taken a lead is We Love Green in Paris, as the name suggests.
About 110,000 festival-goers attended last month’s event to see artists including Sza, who traveled with “almost no equipment,” festival head of sustainable development Marianne Hocquard said.
She said that was down to the festival ensuring they have much of the equipment needed by its artists, and setting energy caps for performances.
Others have taken radical steps: the Bon Air festival in Marseille, France, canceled DJ I Hate Models this year after learning that he was coming by private jet.
Many events encourage their attendees to take greener modes of transportation.
We Love Green launched a partnership with the French Cycling Federation to organize convoys of bikes for this year’s edition, and said that 14 percent of ticket-holders came on two wheels despite the dodgy weather, up from 8 percent last year.
However, there is a limit to how much can be done. When Taylor Swift played Paris in May, the city mayor’s office said there was a surge in arrivals of private jets at local airports.
Private jet operators have been jumping on entertainment events such as festivals or the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer tournament to boost their business.
Private jet operator KlasJet made little mention of the climate in a recent news release.
“When you’re traveling to an amazing event like Euro 2024, the last thing you want is for your experience to be ruined by a delayed flight,” it said.
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