7 Ways to Manage Energy at Your Next Festival
In the last 10 years there has been a major shift in energy consumption at events and festivals. With climate change becoming an increasing concern around the world, many festivals are starting to implement more and more ways to not only save and create energy to power the event but also to reduce carbon emissions.
Many camping festivals are in rural areas and off the grid and require heavy equipment to be transported and massive generators to provide power to stages, vendors, staff, and attendees. Each year millions upon millions of people attend events and festivals worldwide contributing to an outrageous amount of energy and power being used. Not only do events and festivals produce an enormous amount of energy but they also produce quite a bit of Co2.
The majority of events and festivals use fuel-powered generators that aren’t even running at maximum efficiency. A study in 2012 by De Montfort University in Europe monitored generators at 8 events and showed them all running below a 25% load for a period of time and some operating below 25% the entire time. In half the cases the generators were more than double the capacity required and at one event the generator at the main stage was running at eight times the capacity of the peak load. This not only causes more Co2 to be released into the atmosphere but also higher costs.
One of the five single largest costs at a festival is power. It is also a variable expense that is not known before the event and represents 65% of an event’s carbon footprint not including audience travel and equipment and artist transportation. This means that we all need to figure out ways to reduce the amount of power we need, find better means of delivery and travel, and introduce renewable energy sources at events.
We put together a few innovative ways that we can generate clean and renewable energy at events and reduce our carbon footprint as well as overall costs.
