Tara King is very passionate about two things: sustainability and rock music festivals. Alongside running her own environmental consultancy for sustainability, which helps project leaders, public sector and businesses get closer to net zero carbon, she volunteers at Steelhouse Festival - a rock music festival on a mountaintop in Ebbw Vale. Her Clwstwr project was a perfect marriage of the two roles.
“I’m interested in creating a better sustainability position for festivals,” says Tara. “A key area of that is the reduction of fossil-fuel power generated at festival sites, so I decided to do some R&D around the potential to decarbonise the Steelhouse Festival. A big bugbear of mine and the festival owners is how some generators must run 24/7 during the festival for relatively low use and operate over capacity, so I chose to focus on generators and fuel usage.”
Tara is right to be concerned; diesel emissions from generators have a huge environmental impact. According to A Greener Festival, the UK event industry uses an estimated 380m litres of diesel annually, causing 1.2 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) to be released.
“At Steelhouse Festival, which gets about 16,000 visitors over three days in July, generators have to fuel lots of things backstage: fridges, freezers, catering for crews of up to 100 people and any overnight energy requirements. Then there's the actual stage production side, which involves even bigger generators. A lot of fuel is used overnight to keep the front of house desks dry and safe from humidity. There's also security lighting, campsite lighting, ancillary generators that run overnight... they're all using diesel and creating emissions.
“I wanted my research to monitor the real energy need and demand of the festival, how efficient our generators are and whether there’s a way to get renewables on some of the generators. Some renewable generator technology exists already, but it's very difficult to utilise at a competitive rate, compared to a diesel generator, and some are not agile enough for our site (a sheep field with no mains utilities).”
Initially, Tara had intended on using the 2020 Steelhouse Festival to get a baseline for the festival’s energy consumption (and from there, an idea of the festival’s carbon footprint). However, the pandemic forced her to pivot her plans because the festival was cancelled.
“I ended up doing a lot of desk-based research. Some of my research went into finding the right carbon foot-printing toolkit for the festival overall, understanding generator fuel consumption, finding a suitable lower-impact generator and seeing what other festivals are doing. I was able to calculate what the base loads were for fuel consumption based on the historical fuel consumption from all the generator systems that we used. We realised that the fuel for the generators is a relatively low carbon impact compared to the fuel that's used for transport. We also clarified where our main power issues were and what volumes we were using at what times, so we've got a good profile for the festival.
“We also found out that there is equipment out there, but it's expensive. We looked at making our own set of equipment; it was a cheaper option and could potentially bring in extra future income if we rented it out when we aren’t using it. We’re part-way there as we’ve now built our own renewable energy generator, consisting of a cabin with solar panels on the top and a small turbine attached to the roof. The captured energy goes into a bank of storage batteries, which power can be drawn from. It is being tested on powering some of the ancillary needs. There’s much more testing to do and we need to build at least one more generator to gauge things, but there are opportunities going forward.”
One other area that Tara learnt a lot about was the demands that are coming in from the market (including festival attendees and acts) and what they expect in terms of sustainability: “Being able to have green energy and good sustainability credentials would enable us to do the right thing, all while supporting the marketing of the festival to bands and ticket buyers.”
She prepared a survey to find out what customers think the festival should prioritise when it comes to sustainability and whether there’d be interest in things like a plant-a-tree scheme to accompany ticket sales. As last year’s festival didn’t go ahead, it’ll hopefully be put into use for the 2021 Steelhouse Festival.
“As well as this work on generators and renewables, we do a lot in terms of recycling and keeping the site clean. We promote the use of reusable cups and are rapidly reducing single-use plastic on-site. We try to encourage our festival-goers to follow our lead and work with public transport operators to make more sustainable travel plans. We've also linked up with the A Greener Festival team, where like-minded festival operators share their tips and knowledge. Hopefully, with all of our work and a global drive towards more sustainable festivals, we will reach that site carbon-neutral target soon. Until then, I’m keen to do more research to get us there faster.
“Without Clwstwr, we couldn’t have done all this work. We’re always looking for better ways to build our infrastructure in a green way, so having the time and money to put towards research and development has brought us closer to understanding how we might become a carbon-neutral festival.”