AGF’s Claire O’Neill hails ‘new dawn’ for sustainable events

A Greener Future (AGF) co-founder Claire O’Neill has hailed a “new dawn” for sustainable live music events after Massive Attack’s groundbreaking eco-friendly concert.

The British band recently delivered their first show in five years, dubbed Act 1.5, which was powered by 100% renewable energy.

Held at Clifton Downs in their home city of Bristol, the concert, production and catering were powered entirely by battery and solar power.

AGF was responsible for advanced planning, on-site sustainability management and coordination, post-event analysis and reporting for the 35,000-capacity concert.

“This show has really pushed the boundaries and shown what is possible in events at scale,” says O’Neill, who has worked on sustainability in live events for 20 years.

“A huge amount of work and effort has gone into the greening of the live sector over time albeit often isolated or on the fringes without becoming the norm. I’ve never seen the entire main stage of a 35,000-capacity event solely depend entirely on a battery which is solely powered by the wind and the sun with no diesel back-up, with 100% vegan menu and extra trains and free EV buses organised for the audience.”

“I think that we’re going to see fewer and fewer diesel generators being used in the coming years, finally”

“A new line has been drawn in the sand for what we expect of events of all sizes, and what can be done when you really put your mind to it, and your money where your mouth is. I think that we’re going to see fewer and fewer diesel generators being used in the coming years, finally.”

Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity and co-founder of Grid Faeries alongside O’Neill, which provided the giant renewable charged batteries, is inclined to agree: “We’ve had several enquiries off the back of the concert and I think it’s only a matter of time before batteries take over from diesel – that’s our intention as the Grid Faeries.”

In fact, battery-powered shows have already been embraced by artists including Billie Eilish, Bruce Springsteen, Lukas Graham and Dave Matthews Band, festivals such as Lollapalooza and venues such as the Netherlands’ Johan Cruijff ArenA.

As O’Neill explains, the Act 1.5 concert was a “manifestation” of a carbon emissions report commissioned by Massive Attack and conducted by scientists at the University of Manchester’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

Findings from the report and the event will be used to develop a roadmap for the live music industry to make events compatible with the 1.5-degree temperature change limit specified in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“So many people came together to make this happen,” adds O’Neill. “Huge respect to Make Donne who has been working on Act 1.5 along with the band for the last five years, and Jamal Chalabi who went beyond the role of tour managing to navigate much of the sustainability actions of the show on the Bristol Downs.”

“There’s a real fear of stepping away from business as usual – especially when there’s a perceived risk”

But O’Neill says it was the cross-sector collaboration that made the concert viable – particularly in regards to travel, which the report found to be “the single largest contributor to an outdoor event’s carbon footprint”.

To remedy this, Great Western Railway put on specially commissioned trains while Zenobe provided eight fully electric double-decker buses among other things. All vehicles used for transporting batteries and recharging the concert were either fully electric or CNG. Where EV wasn’t possible for trucking and tour buses all suppliers were encouraged to use certified or fuelled by certified waste product HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) fuel.

While these partnerships were invaluable to the event, O’Neill says more infrastructure is needed when it comes to making live music events sustainable.

“We need the rail networks to be cheaper,” says O’Neill. “We need to be able to have drivers or operations happening later if we’re going to have gigs later. There’s infrastructure that needs to be built. We did the composting of all the serverware but we had to take it to a site in West London because there were no in-vessel composters that could process that type of material in the southwest. So these are the kinds of things that we need to work with other sectors on.”

O’Neill has also called on the “bigger players in the industry” to ensure that Act 1.5 is the beginning of a tide change.

“There’s a real fear of stepping away from business as usual – especially when there’s a perceived risk,” she explains. “There is often a resistance to change but what was lovely to see with Act 1.5 is that people who were sceptical at the start came on board by the end and were excited to be a part of something that has a positive impact and worked.”

“The economics have caught up with the environmental reasoning at this stage”

As for misconceptions about the affordability of sustainable events, O’Neill argues: “There’s funding available and finances to build out the grid. Economics has caught up with environmental reasoning at this stage. It makes economic sense to change, and even more so when we factor in the cost of not taking climate action.”

The new Labour government in the UK is also a source of optimism for the AGF chief: “There’s a kind of a green light for green sectors to start making the solutions available, and which connects into temporary events as well. Our ultimate aim with the Grid Faeries, for instance, is to work with sites where connecting to the grid is a possibility. The batteries are a stepping stone towards making sites that are used regularly actually fit for purpose, so you don’t truck in a lot of extra equipment. And then when we build out the grid, where possible we build new renewables too, which will move us towards energy independence as a country.”

Excuses banished, O’Neill concludes: “Rather than it being like ‘Oh yes, the green event stuff is all very nice but the technology is not there yet, or it’s too expensive, or we can’t take that kind of risk on the headliner of the show. Actually, that’s all been proven now. We’ve done it and so from here, we can just keep on building from that.”

AGF are now working together on the post-event analysis supporting Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which will help form a blueprint for eco-friendly touring that will be made publicly available.

Findings from the event will be presented at the 17th edition of the Green Events & Innovations Conference (GEI).

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