Driving Sustainability

Date: 24/05/23

If Formula One was in any doubt about the impact of climate change, the stark reality was brought home to them this week in Italy. The showpiece Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola had to be cancelled after severe flooding swept the area, killing at least eight people and leaving thousands more homeless.

The region experienced six months’ worth of rainfall in just 36hours, with swollen rivers flooding towns and farmland. The tragedy was made all the more poignant by the fact that two of the biggest teams in the sport, Red Bull and Ferrari are both based there.

Can motorsport ever be sustainable?

Of course, no sport that involves fuel-thirsty cars driving round in circles for hours can ever truly be described as sustainable, and that’s just a small fraction of F1’s carbon footprint. The cars on the track account for just 0.7% of the sport’s emissions problem; it’s the surrounding circus where the issues really mount up.

Criss-crossing the planet for races, from Austria to Australia, it’s estimated that F1 teams rack up around 84,000 miles per year. 45% of their carbon footprint is produced by transporting the cars and technical equipment needed for each team, with a further 27% created moving the teams themselves.

Grand ambitions

F1 has grand ambitions to be carbon-neutral by 2030, with measures including a new mandatory synthetic fuel to be introduced for the 2026 season. However, with tight spending controls, designed to make F1 more competitive, teams are currently faced with a choice of improving sustainability or enhancing performance, as McLaren Racing CEO Zak brown explains:

“There are areas we think we can invest in sustainability technologies (but these) may not bring a short-term performance benefit,” he says. “What we'd like to see is some adaptation of the financial regulations that allows you to clearly invest in sustainability.”

Making your own vehicles sustainable

Investing in sustainability is something we’re very familiar with here at Think Hire. As one of the UK’s leading solar site generator hire companies, we have been providing sustainable solutions for construction, road and rail projects for years – including their vast fleets of vehicles.

By including a Solartainer as part of your site generator hire, you can power both company cars and electric plant on site, using clean, renewable solar energy. Unlike fixed distribution systems, which require substantial groundworks to install, our portable electric plant and vehicle charging stations can be set up quickly and easily and moved around as the project progresses.

Link your electric charging points to your solar powered site generator hire, and you’ll be effectively powering your plant and vehicles for free, while significantly reducing your carbon emissions at the same time.

It’s not too late

It is not too late for your site to make a difference in the climate battle. However, as events at Imola have shown, we are running out of time. F1 is planning to be carbon neutral by 2030, but your site can start working towards this goal right now – and it doesn’t have to cost the earth.

Electric plant and vehicles may cost a little more, but they are far cheaper to run, especially if you use renewable energy from your solar site generator hire. They are also easier and cheaper to maintain, with electric motors requiring far less maintenance and repairs than internal combustion engines.

To find out more about cutting both your carbon emissions and your running costs, talk to Think Hire today about solar site generator hire for your electric vehicles and plant. We’ll show you how to get off the grid fast and put you on track to lead the field in the race against climate change.

View all Think Hire news