Coldplay detail ‘eco-friendly’ world tour

Coldplay have announced their first tour in four years, which will have an ‘eco-friendly’ focus.

The British band previously said that they would put touring plans on hold as they investigate how to make their concerts more sustainable.

Today, they announced their return to the road which will follow the band’s new album ‘Music of the Spheres’, out tomorrow (15 October).

The Music of the Spheres world tour will kick off in March 2022 in Costa Rica, which has one of the highest rates of renewable energy generation in the world.

Dates for the first seven countries have been announced today and include three at Wembley Stadium (cap. 90,000) in London, two at Stade de France (81,000) in Paris and two at Olympiastadion Berlin (74,000).

According to frontman Chris Martin revealed that the tour will partly be powered by a dancefloor that generates electricity when fans jump up and down, and pedal power at the venues.

“I literally really need you to jump up and down. Because if you don’t, then the lights go out.”

Martin told the BBC in his first interview about the plans that fans will be on “kinetic flooring”.

“When they move, they power the concert,” he said. “And we have bicycles too that do the same thing.”

“The more people move, the more they’re helping. You know when the frontman says, ‘We need you to jump up and down’?

“When I say that, I literally really need you to jump up and down. Because if you don’t, then the lights go out.”

The kinetic flooring is part of a 12-point plan to cut the band’s carbon footprint.

The concerts will use electricity from batteries fuelled by fan power as well as solar energy, recycled cooking oil from local restaurants and mains power from 100% renewable sources where available. For every ticket sold, the band will plant a tree.

“The whole show is powered from renewable energy, which is amazing”

The singer admitted they had not figured out how to cut the environmental impact of some parts of touring but their goal for a few years’ time is to have “slightly shifted the status quo of how a tour works”.

“In some areas, there’s still not enough possible, like how do you get people to a venue without consuming any power? That’s still really hard,” he said.

“Or flying – there’s still a lot of offsetting we have to do, because even sustainable aviation fuel isn’t good enough yet.

“So we know where we still have a long way to go. But in terms of the show itself, the whole show is powered from renewable energy, which is amazing.”

Ahead of the tour, Coldplay will open Oak View Group’s (OVG) Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle – the world’s first carbon-neutral certified arena – on 22 October.

Coldplay’s last tour, A Head Full of Dreams, saw them perform to 5.4 million people across 122 shows in five continents.

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