Energy Revolution balances over three million travel miles from 2018 festivals and tours with Solar for Schools projects across the UK.
Energy Revolution is a charity with a mission to help the live events industry tackle the negative environmental impacts from fossil fuel travel to events. In 2018, it helped its members, from a growing number of festivals and their audiences, suppliers and touring artists, to balance or ‘offset’ the carbon emissions from over 3 million average car miles to events – the equivalent of 962,274 kg CO2e.
100% of balancing donations from 2018 will to go to Solar for Schools, an initiative that puts solar panels on the roofs of schools in the UK, allowing them to produce low-cost clean electricity, while also educating children about the importance of a low carbon future.
New Energy Revolution members in 2018 included: Download and Reading festivals, produced by Festival Republic, who have long championed festival sustainability initiatives. They donated £1 from every car-parking pass sold to Energy Revolution.  Artist, Novo Amor joined the charity in 2018 to balance the CO2 from his 2018 European and North American tour travel. Festival travel provider, Tuned in Travel joined last year balancing 100% of the CO2 from passenger travel to events. Ticket agent, The Ticketsellers, who have worked with the charity from the start, have continued to support the project by introducing their clients to travel-balancing and making it simple for them to join by embedding a travel carbon calculator into the ticket-buying process.
Since it was founded in 2015 Energy Revolution has supported its members to balance over 8.4 million average car miles – that’s more that 2.6 million kg CO2e – with donations in previous years supporting reforestation and wind turbines in India and community-owned solar and wind projects in the UK.
Energy Revolution’s original aim was to help their members balance 10 million travel miles by 2020, but, with growing commitment from the industry and more festivals, suppliers and artists joining the movement, they are on track to reach the goal ahead of schedule this year. Ultimately the charity aims to create a grant-making legacy fund, which can support on-going work to reduce carbon emissions created by the festival and touring sector.
Author: Paul Allott
Paul Allott is a director and co-founder of Event Industry News, Event Tech Live and the Event Technology Awards.
