The combined greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international touring of bands, orchestras and theatre totalled 107,000 tonnes in 2009, according to a report out today.
The report by
Julie’s Bicycle, a not-for-profit organisation set up by the
music industry to help cut its
GHG emissions, looked at 97 tour leg samples in 2009 across the UK and internationally. It estimated around 85,000 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions were produced as a result of bands taking their show on the road. Touring theatre produced approximately 13,400 tonnes of CO2e emissions and orchestras produced approximately 8,600 tonnes. Overseas tours had the largest carbon footprint, with personnel travel and freight the most carbon intensive activities of touring.
"We looked at the movement of people and the movement of production and were pleasantly surprised with the results. Touring is a very important part of the music industry business and we thought the emissions would be higher than they are," said Alison Tickell, director of Julie’s Bicycle.
'Moving Arts: Managing The Carbon Impacts of Our Touring: Bands, Orchestras and Theatre’ is the latest in a series of reports published by Julie’s Bicycle to help the music industry reduce its environmental impact. In 2008, it released a report looking at the entire environmental impact of the UK music industry. It concluded that the industry – not including touring – was responsible for around 540,000 tonnes of
carbon emissions a year.
Practical solutions
Today’s touring report, which took nine months to complete and gathered information from 300 people and organisations, aims to set the scene for how bands, orchestras and theatre tour in the future, offering practical solutions to help cut touring emissions, as well as measuring them.
The report identifies a number of barriers to reducing the environmental impact of touring, including perceived financial cost, the availability of low carbon equipment and vehicles, and audience and artist expectation for spectacular shows.
"The main barrier is international touring, where schedules can change and routing tours efficiently becomes harder," said Tickell. "There is also a focus on the spectacular in touring and we need more information of lower carbon
technologies and how to take them to scale to enable change."
No emissions targets
The report makes several key recommendations to tackle the carbon footprint of touring, including scoping GHG emissions when planning a tour and measuring them after the tour. But it does not set targets for reducing emissions.
"This is all about relationships and where the leaders of influence in the industry are who can trigger a shift across the human supply chain," said Tickell. "We didn’t want to set targets."
To make it easier for the industry to reduce it’s touring emissions, Julie’s Bicycle today also launched a free online tool that will measure the carbon impacts of tours.
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