Austin City Limits stage to be battery-powered
Promoter C3 Presents is partnering with Reverb’s Music Decarbonization Project to power a stage at Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival in the US, solely on a hybrid battery system.
The 75,000-cap Texas event’s IHG Hotels & Resorts stage will deploy more than 1 MWh of battery storage capacity, minimising the run time of biodiesel generators providing significant fuel and emissions savings.
In addition, the giant shade tents at food court ACL Eats, the West Entrance of the festival, and a variety of backstage areas will also be powered on hybrid battery systems.
The move follows the piloting of a similar initiative at this year’s Lollapalooza in Grant Park, Chicago.
“Following this year’s highly successful and history-making battery-powered main stage at Lollapalooza, we are excited to bring this sustainable solution to Austin City Limits Music Festival,” says Jake Perry, director of operations and sustainability at C3 Presents.
“We have set a goal to build a more sustainable future for music festivals, which involves implementing solutions that make our operations more energy efficient and reinventing how we look at power.”
ACL Fest 2024 will be held from 4-6 & 11-13 October at Zilker Park, topped by headliners Dua Lipa, Tyler, The Creator, Chris Stapleton, Blink-182, Sturgill Simpson and Pretty Lights.
“Decarbonising power is the future for the music industry and every industry”
“We’re thrilled to partner with ACL Fest and the team at C3 Presents for this effort,” says Tanner Watt, Reverb director of partnerships. “Decarbonising power is the future for the music industry and every industry. What’s happening this year at ACL Fest is an important step towards eliminating our reliance on fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas pollution.”
Battery-powered shows have also been embraced by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Lukas Graham and Dave Matthews Band, plus venues such as the Netherlands’ Johan Cruijff ArenA.
Indeed, Eilish’s long-standing link-up with environmental nonprofit Reverb resumed last Sunday (29 September) with the launch of the singer’s Hit Me Hard and Soft tour at Québec’s Centre Videotron in Canada. The collaboration has previously resulted in more than $1 million donated to environmental, greenhouse gas reduction, and climate justice projects.
Sustainability efforts on the tour will include reducing greenhouse gas pollution, decreasing single-use plastic waste, supporting climate action, and updating concession offerings to promote and encourage plant-based food options with Support+Feed. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales in North America will go to Reverb, while Reverb Eco-Villages will be set up at two locations in the main concourse of every show.
Last week meanwhile, Massive Attack announced a weekend of live music in Liverpool, featuring IDLES and Nile Rodgers, under the banner Act 1.5 presents, in the wake of their groundbreaking eco-friendly concert in Bristol in August.
The weekend event at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena from 28-30 November will build on the sustainability methods first trialled at the Bristol show.
Over the summer, Coldplay, Live Nation, Warner Music Group and Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced an advisory committee for their study of the live music industry’s carbon footprint.
- The latest issue of IQ features Green Guardians 2024 – our annual list of sustainable innovators.
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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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Springsteen’s Oslo concerts to be battery powered
Live Nation Norway will introduce electricity from mobile batteries for Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming concerts in Oslo, Norway.
Springsteen and The E Street Band are due to play two concerts at Voldsløkka (cap. 40,000) on 30 June and 2 July.
Thanks to a new partnership between LN Norway and Norwegian renewable energy and technology company Eviny, the gigs will use electricity from mobile batteries – thereby significantly reducing the use of diesel generators.
Live Nation Norway festivals Tons of Rock and the newly launched Vaulen Open Air will also benefit from the introduction of Eviny’s batteries.
“At Live Nation Norway, we are taking the lead in finding new, emission-free solutions”
Eviny has been producing clean renewable energy from hydropower for over 100 years and is now investing in mobile batteries and energy solutions to slash emissions within Norway’s live music scene.
The partnership sees the promoter take a step closer to decarbonising its festivals’ energy sources, seven years ahead of the original goal date of 2030.
“At Live Nation Norway, we are taking the lead in finding new, emission-free solutions,” says Martin Nielsen, head promoter in Live Nation Norway. “Eviny will now become an energy partner where the goal is to take action and make a difference to pave the way for a more sustainable live music scene both nationally and globally.”
Marit Meland, business developer at Eviny, adds: “We see a huge interest from several industries that are moving full speed ahead into the green shift. We see more and more interest from markets where there is a temporary need for electricity. The live music scene is a part of this, both when it comes to concerts and other types of events.”
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