Last word: World Motor Sport Comes Clean

Following the initial work undertaken by a dedicated Working Group mandated to develop a Sustainability Programme, the World Motor Sport Council approved late last month the implementation of the FIA’s ‘Action for Environment’ programme. The FIA’s goal, within a decade, is that motor sport will be recognised as an exemplar of best practice in environmental sustainability and a world leader for environmental innovation creating a positive impact on both the track and road. Its strategy will focus on measuring and improving innovation and promotion. At the same time, FIA confirmed the new electric Formula E Championship season will run for the first time from September 2014 to June 2015. And the McLaren team is firmly at the front of F1′s sustainability grid, becoming the championship’s first ever “carbon neutral” team. Read More

The venue was the Goodwood Motor Circuit, part of the 12,000 acre Goodwood Estate, which originally opened its gates to the public in September 1948 to host Britain’s first post-war motor race meeting at a permanent venue.

See below for the Goodwood ISO 20121 sustainability case study.

The second World Motor Sport Council meeting of 2013 concluded the inaugural FIA Sport Conference Week, a new event on the Federation’s calendar developed to provide a global platform of networking and business exchange for the motor sport community.

Jean Todt thanked Lord March and the staff at Goodwood for their hospitality in the magnificent surroundings of the Goodwood Estate, which provided an excellent venue for the first Sport Conference Week. With Delegates from more than 70 countries in attendance, the event was universally hailed by the motor sport community as a huge success.

Case Study: McLaren accelerates towards sustainable racing. See below.

The following decisions were taken by the World Motor Sport Council:

FIA ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

Following the initial work undertaken by a dedicated Working Group mandated to develop a Sustainability Programme, the WMSC approved in principle the implementation of the FIA’s ‘Action for Environment’ programme. The FIA’s goal, within a decade, is that motor sport will be recognised as an exemplar of best practice in environmental sustainability and a world leader for environmental innovation creating a positive impact on both the track and road. Its strategy will focus on measuring and improving innovation and promotion.

FIA FORMULA E CHAMPIONSHIP

Technical and Sporting Regulations for the FIA Formula E Championship were agreed in principle, and it was confirmed that the Championship season will run from September 2014 to June 2015. The regulations, along with the calendar comprising a maximum of 12 races, will be presented to the WMSC at its September meeting.

A new registration period for car manufacturers applying for the 2015-2016 Championship season will be open from 1 July 2014 to 1 February 2015.

Certification Framework

The FIA Institute’s Environmental Certification Framework is a targeted programme to improve sustainability across motor sport worldwide. It provides an environmental framework and unique motor sport designed guidelines that stakeholders can engage in and offers incentives for them to advance their environmental performance.

Organisations that sign up to the Environmental Accreditation are rated against three levels of environmental performance, so measuring their achievement and providing a benchmark against which to improve.

This represents the first time that an environmental accreditation system has been developed specifically for sport and is the first such programme of its kind. Fully aligned with the accreditation scheme is a Carbon Offset Initiative, a module enabling stakeholders to reduce their carbon footprint, compensate for unavoidable emissions and achieve carbon neutrality as part of a wider set of environmental actions.

27.06.2013 | Statement on Sustainability

FIA and FIA Institute will work together to improve motor sport sustainability around the world

FIA Deputy President for Sport Graham Stoker and FIA Institute Deputy President Garry Connelly gave a joint statement on sustainability on the final day of FIA Sports Conference Week.

Graham Stoker opened the statement by outlining the FIA’s involvement in sustainability issues to date.

He said: “The challenge for motor sport and the FIA is at first glance daunting to say the least, but we have a great opportunity to play a constructive role on environmental issues both as a sport and as the representative of mobility consumers.

“We are in a unique position to not only reduce our impact, as every organisation and sport must do, but we can also help to develop the solutions of tomorrow. In the last World Motor Sport Council, the FIA Sustainability Working Group was set up to define a strategy for the FIA on environmental issues that can form the basis of our actions for the coming years.

“But sustainability is not a new subject for us. The FIA has been involved in this area as far back as the Rio summit in the early 90s. For the FIA since then, it is a topic that we have taken seriously, in both our Sporting and Mobility arms. In Mobility, over the years, we have played a key role in campaigning for stricter emissions standards on pollutants and greenhouse gases, notably at EU level but also through Working Parties of the UN in Geneva.

“Mobility was also responsible for important actions such as Make Cars Green, which successfully demonstrated how sport can be used to promote important mobility issues.

“On the sporting side we have played an important role in areas such as consumer acceptance of new technologies, as was the case with the move from leaded fuel to unleaded. Motor sport was amongst the first to make this move and helped convince the consumer that unleaded fuel could perform just as well as traditional fuel.

“More recently technologies such as KERS have been introduced and have already helped to form the basis of mobility solutions for environmental sustainability issues.

“In the coming years I have no doubt that through Formula E we will drive the same consumer acceptance for electric vehicles.

Garry Connelly then talked about the work of the Environmentally Sustainable Motor Sport Commission and the FIA Institute.

He said: “The FIA Environmentally Sustainable Motor Sport Commission was established in 2009. This Commission, chaired by Peter Wright, was set up to take an initial look at some of the key policies and principals that needed to be adapted into motor sport. These were debated and adopted at the World Motor Sport Council after which the Commission, having completed its tasks, was dissolved.

“As part of the process, the FIA Institute changed its statutes to include sustainability and was specifically tasked with the development of a number of topics. Notably: Environmental Management, Carbon Sequestration, and Noise Control.

“On Environmental Management, I am proud to say that we have developed a landmark certification framework specifically designed for motor sport, which a number of stakeholders, including ourselves, have already adopted.

“This Framework sets out how anyone involved in motor sport can measure and improve their environmental impacts.

“I am also pleased to say that this Certification Framework will form one of the cornerstones of the FIA’s strategy.”

Graham Stoker finished the statement by outlining the future strategy plans in this area.

He said: “The work of the Institute has been invaluable in shaping the FIA’s vision on this subject. Tomorrow in the World Motor Sport Council we intend to adopt the FIA’s strategy for the forthcoming years. The key message is that within the decade, we want motor sport to be recognised as an exemplar of best practice in environmental sustainability and a world leader for environmental innovation creating a positive impact on both the track and road.

“To achieve this we will ‘Measure & Improve’ and ‘Innovate & Promote’. By measure and improve, we really are talking about motor sport’s environmental impact and how it can be improved. Tools such as the FIA Institute’s Environmental Certification Framework will be instrumental to this aspect of the strategy.

“The FIA must also get championships to conduct Life Cycle Assessments to improve their own management. Through this we will identify environmental hot spots and prioritise their improvement.

“When it comes to innovation and promotion, we will be considering the pioneering role of motor sport in promoting consumer acceptance. We will look at how new regulations can lead to championships, such as Formula E, developing competitive powertrain solutions and driving consumer acceptance of sustainable mobility.

“We will also focus on technology transfer to the consumer market and award excellence and innovation.

“Finally as an umbrella for the strategy we intend to launch a campaign under the banner ‘Action for Environment’.”

http://www.fiainstitute.com/

In January 2011 Goodwood started its certification journey working to the requirements of BS 8901, the British Standard which recognises an organisation’s efforts in sustainable event management. As a multi-venue site operating major international events it made sense to focus on an event industry-specific standard. By June 2011 Goodwood was in a position to self-certify compliance to BS 8901 having spent six months gaining a full understanding of the standard and implementing new processes both internally and externally. In May 2012 Goodwood became one of the first organisations worldwide to gain certification to ISO 20121, the internationally recognised specification for sustainable event management that evolved from BS 8901. Go to http://www.goodwood.co.uk/downloads/estate/goodwood-iso-20121-case-study.pdf for the full case study.

Case Study: McLaren accelerates towards sustainable racing

Posted on March 5, 2013

In depth analysis of how the carbon-neutral Formula One team stays ahead of the curve of green technology

By Will Nichols

LONDON, 5 MARCH (Business Green) A carbon neutral company that recycles two thirds of its general waste and is headquartered in a state of the art, energy efficient building would generally be applauded.

And if it had set further targets to reduce CO2 emissions by 2.5 per cent year-on-year and send zero waste to landfill by 2015, most commentators would agree that this is a business moving in the right direction from a sustainability point of view.

But what if that company was a Formula One (F1) team, with the associated industrial-scale consumption of resources – would it still be held in such high esteem?

Jonathan Neale, managing director of McLaren Racing, which has achieved all these things, while remaining competitive on the track, thinks it should be. What’s more, he maintains an F1 team faces exactly the same challenges as any other business – getting the best result out of increasingly limited resources.

“It’s just good business for us if we lower the levels of waste we produce or the amount of energy we use,” Neale says. “If we’re spending a pound on overheads, that’s a pound we’re not spending on getting the car to go faster and winning races. It’s hard-nosed business sense.”

McLaren is firmly at the front of F1′s sustainability grid, becoming the championship’s first ever “carbon neutral” team in November 2011. Neale admits some offsetting was needed given the amount of travel required to compete in the global championship, but he insists the bulk of the work to reduce emissions has been done in-house.

The group had already achieved a more than 18 per cent drop in emissions per employee between 2007 and 2011, while the amount of general waste recycled increased from 46 per cent to 66 per cent over the same period.

The improvement was in no doubt aided by the state of the art McLaren Technology Centre (MTC), built for the company by architect Norman Foster, which was designed to incorporate a huge range of environmental and efficiency measures McLaren has since been able to enhance further.

When completed in 2004, the Woking site was dug into the earth to provide a thermal buffer that reduces the need for heating, while a purpose-built lake helps cool the building further. It also makes use of insulated windows to maximise natural light, filters “grey water” through a reed bed system before releasing it into a nearby river, and, in a neat touch, used recycled tyres for its rubber roof.

Since then, the MTC has been improved to enhance its energy efficiency further, making use of a smart building system that automatically switches off air conditioning and lighting in unoccupied areas. The technology saves over 1,300,000kWh of electricity per year – enough to power almost 400 homes. Control strategies for the MTC’s chilled water plant similarly ensure it uses the minimum amount of energy necessary, saving over 900,000kWh of electricity usage per year.

Meanwhile, a heat recovery system redistributes heat created as a by-product of electricity generation to other processes, including generating chilled water through an absorption chiller. Neale says this ensures a “significant cost reduction” in running McLaren’s on-site wind tunnel and sizeable data centres.

McLaren has also tapped into its in-house expertise. A McLaren engineer designed the bespoke low-energy lamps now used along the VIP entrance road, saving 13,000kWh of electricity per year and reducing the frequency at which lamps need to be replaced. Inside the MTC, halogen lights have been replaced by more energy-efficient LEDs, and metal halide bulbs which, along with energy efficient simulation equipment, has saved a combined 500 tonnes of CO2 a year.

These efforts helped McLaren become the first F1 team, and indeed any motor sport stakeholder, to achieve the top environmental award issued by the FIA Institute, a non-for-profit organisation under the umbrella of the FIA that works to improve safety and sustainability across the sport.

After a rigorous audit of its environmental credentials, the FIA Institute declared in February that McLaren had demonstrated “a commitment to continual improvement and impressive environmental awareness throughout the entire organisation”.

Neale is keen to emphasise this point. He argues employee buy-in is key and has been achieved by handing individual parts of the organisation the responsibility for coming up with the ideas to deliver the 2.5 per cent yearly emissions reductions outlined in its environmental policy.

“The pressure to adopt more contemporary sustainable practices is company-wide,” he says. “Sustainability has got to be smoothly managed and long term – embed it at grass roots so it’s not just another patchy initiative.”

But is McLaren a one-off? There is no denying the huge amount of resources used to fly driver, equipment, and scores of supporting team members around the globe, all the while promoting what many would view as an image of fossil fuel-driven excess.

It is also a message that emerging economies – and their millions of potential consumers – are increasingly buying into, with races now being staged in India, Abu Dhabi and Malaysia, alongside the traditional circuits.

Neale insists this picture is changing, for the same reason that businesses all over the world are increasingly adopting green practices – survival. A seemingly unsustainable business model simply is not going to attract the investors F1 needs to secure its future.

“If you want to have a product with 11 competitive teams, sustainability is something we have to champion,” Neale says. “In F1, we want to provide an attractive set of values that matches contemporary business… to make sure we are still relevant to fans, investors, [and] our employees.”

According to research earlier this year by the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA), F1 teams reduced their carbon emissions seven per cent between 2009 and 2011 – so some progress is being made on the environmental front.

Moreover, new rules have been brought in to limit the amount of fuel used in a race, while restrictions on the numbers of engines and gearboxes that can be used has also prompted racing teams to maximise the reuse of materials and ensure offcuts of elements such as carbon fibre are all but eliminated.

“It’s increasingly becoming an energy-constrained series,” Neale says. “I remember people using six engines in a race, now it’s five in a season.”

Green campaigners are likely to want greater concessions, but perhaps F1′s global pull – the television audience for the 2012 series was estimated at well over half a billion – offers a huge opportunity to showcase sustainability, an aspect a new series for electric sports cars is hoping to capitalise on.

McLaren is designing the stock car for the inaugural Formula E championship – a 10 race series through the city streets of Rio, Rome, and possibly London, featuring all-electric cars. Each of the 10 teams will use McLaren’s car when Formula E kicks off next year, but both teams so far involved have expressed their desire to be constructors in their own right.

Neale is confident the championship can live up to the organisers’ hopes that Formula E will accelerate the adoption of electric car technology by advertising it to a new generation of urban consumers.

“There’s been a lot of interest in it – it will work well in city centres,” he says. “And it’s a new market we can move into.”

F1 will always remain a target for green campaigners. But just as the championship has long-served as a test bed for the kind of innovations that have helped make mainstream cars safer and more efficient, there are now also valid hopes that F1 could help drive improvements in green car technology.

Perhaps F1 is changing. After all, everything starts with a green light.

www.carbonstrategygroup.com