Drive to cut audience carbon emissions

Festival-goers would respond to incentives to use public transport or to share car transport to events, thus reducing the carbon footprint of festival travel, according to low carbon campaigners Julie’s Bicycle. The organisation, which brings together science and energy experts to create a low carbon future for the music and creative industries, has published a new report, ‘Jam Packed’, based on data from 14 festivals in the UK and Ireland during the summer of 2008. The report asserts that “Audience travel results in two-thirds of the festival sector’s emissions and a quarter of all music audience travel emissions.” The researchers carried out surveys of festival organisers and festival-goers, covering issues such as car-share schemes, specially organised transport and the travel information available on festival websites. They found that a third of festival-goers thought that responsibility for reducing travel-related carbon emissions lay with festival organisers, and a further third considered transport operators, local authorities and national government most responsible. They also found that over half of festival-goers (56%) are male and around 81% of all attenders are under 35.

The report also identified barriers to persuading audiences to use public transport, including the comparatively lower cost and perceived higher convenience and flexibility of travelling by car, the logistics of bringing camping equipment by public transport and the lapse of time between booking tickets and travelling. Methods which have proved effective include offering free or subsidised public transport service, allocating a proportion of tickets to be combined with public transport tickets, charging for car-parking, and providing onsite equipment and supplies to rent or buy. However, car-sharing would be encouraged by preferential car-parking rates and camping allocation. Alison Tickell and Catherine Langabeer of Julie’s Bicycle said that they hoped that the report’s recommendation would “result in significant changes – manifest by reductions in greenhouse gases”. The company also runs an Industry Green Standard scheme for the creative industries.