Formula 1 will trial a new energy generation system for teams at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix which it expects will significantly reduce carbon emissions.
Teams ordinarily handle their own energy generation needs in order to power their motorhomes, garages, pit walls and other facilities. They do this to avoid the risk of their performance being compromised by local power outages.However F1 has identified a significant opportunity to improve the efficiency of that power use by centralising it and supplying it to the teams. It will trial a new paddock power supply at the Red Bull Ring this weekend.
F1 says its power supply will be produced by more sustainable sources, including a 600 square metre array of solar panels on the inside of the final corner and generators running on hydrotreated vegetable oil biofuel (HVO).
The trial will allow F1 to assess how easily the concept could be rolled out to other circuits. It is part of a series of changes the world championship is making as it aims to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2030.
F1 teams will have their generators available as a back-up if needed this weekend, but if the paddock power supply concept proves successful the series hopes it will be able to phase old generators out.
Ellen Jones, F1’s head of environment, social and governance, said cutting the teams’ dependence on their own power supplies will ultimately allow them to reduce the amount of equipment they take to races, delivering a further cut in F1’s emissions.
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“When you look at what does ‘net zero by 2030’ make up, it has three components, which is the energy from our factories, there is our travel and logistics, and then there’s our energy at events,” said Jones.
“When we look at event energy, you’re actually hitting on two pillars. You’re not only hitting on how do we reduce our carbon emissions from hosting an event, but you’re also looking at how do we ship less? Because we don’t need those generators to ship in the first place and those duplicates.
“So projects like this one are trialling new ways of working so that we can get our teams to collaborate and reduce carbon emissions, but have the potential to reduce not only energy at events, but also hit that critical travelling logistics piece of how do we use less kit, how do we make sure we’re doing it in a more efficient manner?”
The first real-world test of the power supply will help the series judge how easily it could be introduced at more challenging venues, such as street circuits, where there is less room available to set up power generation equipment.
“We have to look at every circuit individually but until we understand what that overall requirement is, it’s very difficult for us to look at that going forward in terms of scale,” said F1’s logistics director Ian Stone.
“Obviously some places have got good space, some have got no space. Temporary circuits could obviously be more challenging. And I think one easy way to produce a more sustainable event is to work with the promoters and the circuits to have a sustainable power supply available that’s robust enough to support the pace and demands of F1 and the teams.”
Stone indicated the emissions cut could be in excess of 90%. “Our estimation is 2022 there was around 200 tonnes of CO2 produced and we’re looking, again subject to receiving that data, to reduce that to around 10 tonnes of CO2.”
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2023 Austrian Grand Prix
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Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
27th June 2023, 12:26
90% of the generator emissions? I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it, it’s long overdue, but I’d love to see it as a percentage of F1’s total emissions.
Raymond Pang
27th June 2023, 12:59
Not really sure that it’s relevant to know what it is as a percentage of F1’s total emissions. What do you hope to glean from that information?
cdfemke (@cdfemke)
27th June 2023, 13:21
You would be able to see if it truly matters, or that i maybe is a prestige project solely aimed at marketing f1 as green
drmouse (@drmouse)
27th June 2023, 15:02
It would be absolutely negligible. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of F1s energy use and carbon footprint comes from logistics, shipping the whole circus around the world.
But then again, swapping incandescent bulbs for LED ones in my house has a negligible effect on the power use of my house, but every little helps. Make lots of small changes and they add up. If everyone looked only at their individual effect on the big picture, nobody would bother to make any savings. Yet if every household in the UK saved only 300Wh/day, enough energy would be saved over the course of the year to eliminate the last of the coal fired power station use we have.
drmouse (@drmouse)
27th June 2023, 15:18
Of course, it probably wouldn’t allow the stations to be eliminated, due to time of use. But the point was that a very small amount of saving from every household, which is negligible in terms of even their own power use, would soon add up to a large amount saved across the country.
James (@laughingorc)
28th June 2023, 0:07
Wholeheartedly agree!
Yes, the biggest polluters are big corporations and fossil fuel industries, and the changes one person can make are insignificant next to the scale of the problem. My using a paper straw at McDonald’s or whatever instead of a plastic one won’t solve anything. But millions of people using paper straws every day instead of plastic ones? That’s actually a pretty big difference.
The amount of carbon emissions Dave’s by these more energy efficient generators might be a drop in the ocean next to the emissions generated by the rest of F1, but it’s better than nothing.
BasCB (@bascb)
28th June 2023, 8:55
Yeah, this is most likely a really small overall step for F1 @drmouse @sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk, but on the other hand taking many small steps does help. Apart from the direct savings by not having all those smelly, loud generators running the whole weekend (and that would go for F1, as well as the support events), as mentioned in the article, it also means that they could stop lugging the generators around, which possibly makes for a few less trucks for the whole fleet combined and a few containers shipped around the world less.
If implemented widely, it would also mean that over time the same will go for other racing that takes place at tracks, and in a broader sense, it could provide a template for other big events on how to do this (much like how the bubbles approach during Covid did inspire other sports’ solutions), which would actually start to make a bit of an impact if it would mean other large scale events like festivals, concerts, etc can become less polluting.
Sergey Martyn
27th June 2023, 14:01
Quit the mandatory tyre change and you clowns will be greatly amazed by the reduction of carbon and bourbon emissions…
S
27th June 2023, 14:22
1 set of tyres out of the 13 that each car is allocated?
Not much of difference…
The most effective way to cut emissions is to stop travelling and to stop designing and constructing new parts every other week.
F1’s aero development aspect is responsible for an enormous amount of waste – and for what? What does it achieve?
It’s not even entertaining, never mind actually useful for any aspect of society.
drmouse (@drmouse)
28th June 2023, 11:19
Over a 7% reduction in tyres manufactured and transported, plus the waste produced by them, seems relatively significant. Plus, if tyres lasted longer, it’s very possible fewer sets would be used in the other sessions too.
Unfortunately, I think that would both hit hard at the core of F1 (as a technical competition) and make periods of dominance more likely (as well as more powerful).
S
28th June 2023, 12:40
But it’s 7% of a very small percentage of the total. In reality, that 7% probably equates to less than .001% of F1’s footprint. It is, literally and in every sense of the word, insignificant.
Teams won’t use fewer sets of tyres if they are available. They will always want to exploit fresh tyres simply because they are faster. If they didn’t plan to use them in the race, they’d just use more in practice and qualifying instead.
Do you remember how many sets the big teams in particular used to munch through before they had allocations?
Ceasing design and technical evolution would more likely do the polar opposite of leading to increased domination – because it would (necessarily) mean that aero was standardised.
And let’s be honest – F1 with spec aero wouldn’t be a huge loss. It’s the technical divergence that is far more important to F1 – and, not at all ironically, it is that facet which they have restricted most.
drmouse (@drmouse)
29th June 2023, 14:16
If you look at the power use of my light bulbs, it equates to less than 0.001% of my household energy use. Does that mean I should leave them all on all the time?
If you look at my house’s energy use, it probably equates to less than 0.000001% of the UK’s energy use. Does that mean I should take no steps to improve it?
Ceasing in-season updates to design would likely lead to more dominance, because if one team did better than the rest, their advantage is locked in for the whole season. At least, as things stand, there is a chance for the other teams to catch up over the course of the season to give more competition towards the end.
That said, I wouldn’t mind spec aero myself. Aero is one of the things I enjoy least about the technical competition, as it’s something I don’t understand very well*. Conversely, I love talk of engines, gearboxes, energy recovery systems, suspension, brakes etc, because I do understand those well. It’s a big part why I dislike the engine freeze so much: All we ever talk about now, from a technical PoV, is aero because that’s pretty much all they can develop significantly.
* I studied mechanical and electronic engineering at university. Even though aerodynamics was covered it was only the basics. The rest was studied in more detail which, along with my lifelong love of cars and time spent working on them, led to a far deeper understanding.
S
29th June 2023, 15:17
It means that if you did, it would make a negligible difference to your overall power consumption. And globally, an infinitesimally small difference. Go for it.
If you are that concerned about it – buy a solar panel and a battery. Ignore their rather concerning respective carbon footprints, of course, as is customary when talking about humanity’s electric future.
If an action makes such an insignificant impact (so as to be ineffectual) then what is actually the point of doing it? It’s more a feelgood action that a positively contributory one.
The worst part about aero being so important in F1 now (and as you say, basically all that is left to explore) is that knowledge gained in F1 is not directly transferable to anything else. Nothing. It is wasted effort and expenditure, in real world terms.
It is one of the fundamental reasons why I consider F1 a show first and foremost. Technical development in F1 now is irrelevant and largely pointless. I would go so far as to assert that it is (in its current form with such restrictions and the nature of F1’s regs being predominantly stable for several years at a time) quite a destructive and damaging aspect of F1, invoking more negatives than positives.
drmouse (@drmouse)
30th June 2023, 7:56
The effect of using my light bulbs differently, or using more efficient light bulbs, is insignificant. Even switching from incandescent bulbs isn’t as effective as many think: the extra power is converted to heat, and in the UK you normally need heating of some form anyway, so it isn’t really wasted.
However, as small an effect as it has, it does have an effect. When combined with other power saving strategies, and when applied across a large population, they do make a significant effect.
It’s like the old points about financial prudence. If you can save a penny on something, that’s insignificant. But if you save that penny on 100 items, every week of the year, you’ve saved £50. If every household in the UK did that, there’s a combined saving of around £1bn.
On to aero, I’m actually with you. The emphasis on aero makes F1 less and less relevant. It’s the most wasteful area of F1 development, consuming vast amounts of time, huge amounts of power (in wind tunnel and CFD use), while giving negligible benefit to the world. I’m not really in favour of spec aero, but that’s mainly on principal (spec parts just aren’t F1 IMHO). But if very much support a simplification of the parts.
MichaelN
27th June 2023, 15:43
But how will F1 spread all that rubber (micro)waste around if not by using 40+ tyres for about six hours of driving? Per car!
On a more serious note; the enormous waste of resources and energy, not to mention the pollutants left behind at the track, due to F1s excessive tyre usage is indeed a big blind spot in all this.
Dani B. Molina (@esmiz)
27th June 2023, 14:35
As “official” information from F1, I’ll take it with a grain of salt. I don’t deny that they are doing something about it, but I find it curious that information about these things always comes from F1 itself. Is there someone checking that what they say is true? Is there any way to check it? Can you see somewhere how much energy F1 is currently using and what percentage belongs to each thing?
I am of the opinion that if these things could be independently verified, or better yet, made public, people would trust them a lot more. Meanwhile, they are just words.
T
27th June 2023, 17:32
Your skepticism is very valid and very healthy!
As far as watchdogs are concerned there are quite a few accountability balances. In no particular order:
– UK’s Advertising Standards Authority is cracking down on the use of the term “Carbon Neutral” x or “Net Zero” x, where x is whatever product being advertised. Companies won’t be able to just claim a product is sustainably made or carbon neutral when they’ve done nothing to their production scheme and or are just purchasing credits. It’s going to be very hard to green-wash through advertising in a short while. Source
– It is a lofty and essential endeavor that if it failed, would fail spectacularly as F1 is publicizing this endeavor. The teams need the power to operate so F1 needs to nail this and it would be very easy to tell they’ve failed when the backup generators are fired up. which brings us to:
– Journalists are reporting every action and inaction on this matter so if this is all a sham. We should expect the bombshell article sometime in the future. I’m sure of this.
– F1 itself is a signatory on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Sports for Climate Action Framework. It’s not like the primary driving force behind their sustainability efforts but their absence or non compliance would be greatly noticed.
The Dolphins
27th June 2023, 17:13
With the added benefit of the teams not having to transport a lot of generators around the globe. Sounds like at least a step in the right direction.
Now what about those night races which are powered by temporary light rigs all running on their own generators? It would be an interesting conflict to tell a nation which extracts vast amounts of oil and hosts a night race (especially the one which is a state-owned series partner) that they need to run biofuels for their generators.
SteveP
27th June 2023, 21:04
I can’t help wondering where this fits in the teams’ cost cap expenditure. Is it a transference of the expense of generating the power away from the teams and onto the venue? Fuel costs are in the budget atm.
Does the venue meter power use by each team and charge accordingly?
Does the venue do a typical exhibition hall charging rate (where a single 13A socket will cost you the better part of 1k) and the power is only on for “show hours” unless you pay extra?
RandomMallard
28th June 2023, 1:14
As this is the paddock, the generator costs may well be classed under hospitality, which iirc is not included under the cost cap I think?
I don’t know for certain though, just a theory…
Qeki (@qeki)
28th June 2023, 18:55
So we can expect power issues for all the teams and then we will have another red flagged practise session.
or it can all go according to plan..
ryanoceros (@ryanoceros)
29th June 2023, 16:35
It’s quite telling that F1 hadn’t yet considered this despite their advertised attempts to be carbon neutral. I get the feeling they thought they could achieve that by purchasing worthless and ineffective carbon offsets.
Now ban private flights to the race venues, require shipping on vessels with reasonable emissions levels, and eliminate all the greenhouse gasses emitted by the cars idling waiting to get in and out of the venue car parks.