“ We need to be able to bring everyone who ’ s operating on our site with us .”
and-learn this year to figure out what the capacity of those batteries are , where they ’ re best used and how they work best with generators .
Is there a wider strategy around renewable energy ? Ultimately , the goal is to get our festivals hooked up to the national grid . That is the dream . Biodiesel is great , it ’ s a big move forward from where we were , but it does still produce carbon and not all generators can be run at maximum efficiency at all times . We ’ re finding you can charge up the batteries with generators that are operating at their best efficiency , which means they ’ re burning much less fuel to charge the battery . That can really drive down overall fuel usage across the site .
Research has shown audience travel is typically responsible for 80 % of a greenfield event ’ s emissions , how much of a focus do you have on reducing the impact of audience travel ? With our London festivals and city venues we are very lucky to have incredible public transport links but beyond that we do have a lot of suppliers transport with large HGVs coming down to sites . We ’ re tracking all incoming site traffic , the types of vehicles used and the visit frequency . We don ’ t want to keep that data to ourselves , we want to be able to share that with our partners . It ’ s not something that can be tackled by us alone . We need to be able to bring everyone who ’ s operating on our site
The O2 wormery
Sam Booth
with us , and I think that data capture piece first and foremost is super important .
Are suppliers ’ sustainability credentials examined before you engage with them on projects ? Absolutely . We are very lucky in our venue world to be working with the likes of Levy and Peppermint . Levy specifically have very stringent and ambitious goals in that space . So that helps us to aim for massively reduced carbon on our menus . At The O2 , Peppermint have been measuring their impact for a number of years now and have got very ambitious targets in that space .
How are you tackling the issue of single-use plastic at events and venues ? At Eventim Apollo and The Halls Wolverhampton we use Stack- Cup reusable cups , and at The O2 and Indigo at The O2 we ’ re using compostable paper cups . Those systems are working pretty well at the moment but we ’ re constantly looking at the reusable systems to figure out how we can increase retention , that ’ s the most crucial part . Cups is a very live issue ; we are working with Julie ’ s Bicycle to come up with a definitive solution to that issue . In Germany , we have reusable cup systems in our venues that involve having big in-house washing machines to clean the cups . We are also very hot on the plastic issue at festivals . There is no single-use
“ We need to be able to bring everyone who ’ s operating on our site with us .”
plastic at BST . We make sure that all our suppliers and partners adhere to those regulations .
What is your view on carbon removal schemes that involve removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it through various means such as plants , rocks and underground reservoirs ? We are going to start looking at things like carbon removals in the not-too-distant future . Some people would say they are on the edge of this space , but they ’ re being looked at a lot more , and investigated by organisations such as the UN as the only real way of us getting towards net zero . I think us putting money into those kinds of technologies is going to be crucial , that ’ s the route that we want to go down with our partners . We are very focused on getting the carbon out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible .
What ’ s the next big step we can expect to see from AEG ? Towards the end of this year , we ’ re going to have an awful lot more to talk about . There ’ s a lot of big initiatives . It ’ s amazing to see the buy-in from board level all the way through to the people on the ground . One of the things we ’ ll be launching in September is a big training piece so everyone in the company understands not only what we ’ re trying to fix but how we ’ re approaching the issues . Education is such a huge piece because it really does help persuade people to take action .
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