Formula 1's renewable energy shift drives 26% drop in carbon footprint
Often referred to as "the pinnacle of motorsport,' the racecar organization, which hosts an annual championship featuring the best drivers in the world, has seen its carbon emissions drop 26% since 2018. At the end of the 2024 season, the sport's carbon footprint fell to 168,720 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from 228,793.
F1 said in a statement on Wednesday that it's halfway toward achieving its minimum 50% reduction target, as set out in its "net zero by 2030' commitment.
"It's a key milestone and the culmination of a lot of work,' said Ellen Jones, head of environmental, social and governance at F1, in an interview. "We've changed the way we operate, changed the way we work' with the racing teams and promoters, as well as Formula 1's management and regulator, she said.
A major factor in the reductions has been a years-long shift to renewable energy, Jones said. Investment in sustainable aviation fuel for travel and freight use, and other alternative energy sources including solar and biofuels, contributed to the decline. Next year, F1 has set a target for the cars to have new hybrid engines and be powered entirely by advanced sustainable fuel.
"We're not only changing what we're doing materially, we're also changing the technologies,' Jones said.
The sport has achieved carbon reductions across the four major categories that it tracks: factories and facilities, down 59% since 2018; logistics, down 9%; event operations, down 12% on a per-race basis; and travel, down 25%.
An increase in using remote operations and changes to the race schedule also have resulted in lower greenhouse gas emissions. Having remote broadcast operations has allowed about 140 personnel to avoid having to travel to the race location each weekend. And changing the date of the Japanese Grand Prix to align with other races last year in the Asia-Pacific region also contributed to lower emissions. In 2026, the date of the Monaco Grand Prix will be moved to align with other European events and eliminate an additional transatlantic crossing.
F1 said its climate commitment is "set in accordance with the science' from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and aligns with the panel's definition of net zero emissions. The racing series' goal is to reduce absolute emissions by a minimum of 50% from a 2018 baseline, which was calculated using guidance set by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
F1 has faced criticism from activists who say the sport is harmful to the environment. In 2022, demonstrators with Just Stop Oil sat on the track during the 2022 British Grand Prix, disrupting the race. The construction of Madrid's Grand Prix street circuit also has prompted backlash.
The Brazilian leg of the F1 schedule takes place in November, days before the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be hosted in the South American country.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Japan Times
McLaren must also deal with disappointment amid runaway success
McLaren boss Zak Brown is preparing to deal with disappointment at the end of the Formula 1 season, even as the team enjoys one of its most dominant years and a 200th grand prix win at the weekend. As the title battle between Oscar Piastri and teammate Lando Norris heats up, the McLaren pair separated by just nine points after Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, the American conceded he was also thinking about how to handle the aftermath. Red Bull's reigning champion Max Verstappen, the McLaren drivers' closest rival, is now 97 points off the pace and told reporters at the weekend that he may not win again this year given his car's issues. Even before the weekend, both Piastri and Norris cast caution aside and called it a two-horse race. One of them will surely end the year celebrating a dream come true. The other will rue what might have been, with a new engine era next season shaking everything up again and chances potentially disappearing. Losing always hurts, doubly so when it is to a teammate with the same car, and Brown said McLaren would have to deal with the situation sensitively when — although he still insisted on saying if — the time came. "Eventually ... we'll just sit down and actually have a conversation and go 'right, one of you is going to win and it's going to be the best day of your life. One of you is going to lose. How do you want us to handle that?'" he told a select group of reporters. "We'll actually sit down and go 'Right, you want us to jump up and down and celebrate? This guy won.' So we're fully aware and sensitive to 'how do you celebrate that situation?'" Australian Piastri has won six races to Norris's five but the Briton has momentum going into the August break, with three wins from his last four starts. The pair have had seven one-two finishes from 14 races, including the last four, and have left rivals trailing. McLaren is so far ahead in the constructors' standings — 299 points over Ferrari — that the crown is a given. Much has been made of the potential for a falling out between friends, and for clashes on track given what is at stake, but Brown was sanguine and said the relationship was only growing stronger. When Norris ran into the back of Piastri as he challenged for the lead in Canada in June, the Briton defused the situation by immediately taking responsibility. Piastri locked up behind Norris in Hungary on Sunday, in what could have been a repeat of that Montreal accident, but no contact was made. Brown said there was no 'elephant in the room' at McLaren, with the drivers having complete transparency on strategy and how the team go about racing, and he expected more close calls in future. "There's competitiveness brewing ... as the championship builds, I'm sure that tension will grow," said the boss. "We're fully anticipating them 'swapping paint' again at some point, I'm very confident it won't be deliberate, which is where you then get into the problems. "They will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren, we know that and they know that, so we're not afraid of that. "I'm positive they're never going to run each other off the track, and that's where you get into bad blood. So they're free to race ... there are rules around our racing, which is respect your teammate, they know that."
Japan Today
3 days ago
- Japan Today
China's Baidu to deploy robotaxis on rideshare app Lyft
China's tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years Chinese internet giant Baidu plans to launch its robotaxis on rideshare app Lyft in Germany and Britain in 2026, pending regulatory approval, the two companies said on Monday. Last month, Baidu announced a similar agreement with Uber in Asia and the Middle East as it seeks to take pole position in the competitive autonomous driving field both at home and abroad. Lyft and Baidu said Monday that "in the following years" the fleet of Apollo Go driverless cars will be expanded to thousands of vehicles across Europe. They did not specify which other countries the cars would be deployed in, and it was not clear how long it might take to gain regulatory approval for the initial deployment. Driverless taxis are already on some roads with limited capacity in the United States and China, most notably in the central city of Wuhan, where a fleet of over 500 can be hailed by app in designated areas. Their reach is spreading, with Shanghai's financial district Pudong recently announcing a batch of permits for multiple companies to operate robotaxis. China's tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years, with intelligent driving the new battleground in the country's cutthroat domestic car market. Baidu is not alone among Chinese companies in searching to expand its foothold abroad. Its rival WeRide is also active in the Gulf region, and in January announced it had been picked to lead a small pilot project in Switzerland. another Chinese company, said in May that it had signed a deal to launch its self-driving taxis on Uber in "a key market in the Middle East later this year". San Francisco-based Lyft in April said it had agreed to buy German taxi app Freenow, planting a flag in the European market. The acquisition marked Lyft's "most significant expansion outside North America", the group said. © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
5 days ago
- Japan Today
Lewis Hamilton says he's 'useless' and suggests a driver change at Ferrari after teammate takes pole
Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain walks back to his pits after failing to complete during the qualifying session for the Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix at the Hungaroring racetrack in Mogyorod, Hungary, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos) auto racing Lewis Hamilton called himself 'absolutely useless' and suggested Ferrari should change drivers after he qualified 12th for the Hungarian Grand Prix and teammate Charles Leclerc took pole position. It was a new low in a difficult first season with Ferrari for seven-time Formula 1 champion Hamilton, who qualified outside the top 10 for the second race in a row. "I'm useless, absolutely useless," Hamilton told British broadcaster Sky Sports. 'The team have no problem. You've seen the car's on pole. So they probably need to change driver.' Hamilton had said 'every time, every time' over the radio after he was eliminated in the second part of qualifying. That signified that 'it's me every time,' he clarified to Sky later. Hamilton had earlier seemed set to qualify 13th, and he was only promoted to 12th after the second part of qualifying had finished. That was because Kimi Antonelli's time was struck out after it was noticed the Mercedes rookie had gone outside the track limits. It was the second week running that Hamilton had been frustrated with his qualifying performance. He qualified 18th for the sprint race in Belgium last week after a spin, and 16th for the Grand Prix when one of his times was struck out. Still, Hamilton delivered one of his best drives of the year, cutting through the field on a wet track, and eventually finished seventh. After a move from Mercedes which stunned F1 last year, Hamilton has yet to finish on the podium in a Grand Prix race with Ferrari, with a best finish of fourth. He did win a sprint race in China in March, but a double disqualification for technical infringements on Hamilton and Leclerc's cars in the Chinese Grand Prix the next day required a time-consuming rethink of Ferrari's race setups. Leclerc is fifth in the standings, only one position ahead of Hamilton, but has five podium finishes in 2005. In Sunday's race, he'll aim to give Ferrari its first F1 win since October. Last week, Hamilton said it was 'crunch time' and revealed he's been holding a series of meetings with Ferrari executives to discuss improvements and ensure he has more of a say in how the team develops its car for the sweeping regulation changes coming in 2026. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
