The Eurovision host Liverpool has become the first city in the UK to commit to the Paris agreement for major live events.
The city will issue licences for only those concerts and festivals that agree to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to help meet climate goals, including using a proportion of renewable energy to power the festival and reducing the number of cars visitors take to events.
The council has taken the step after research released on Tuesday found car travel to festivals made up a significant proportion of an event’s climate emissions but was not normally included in the festival’s carbon footprint.
All major festivals and events must get licences to operate from local authorities and while 310 local authorities in the UK have officially declared a climate emergency – representing more than 75% of all local authorities of this type – Liverpool is the first to commit to the measures.
The Paris agreement was signed in 2015 by 196 countries to keep global temperature rises below 1.5C by the end of the century.
The study, from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, found festivals could reduce their emissions significantly by reducing parking spaces.
Researchers estimated the negative impact of audiences travelling to eight large festivals in the UK, including Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds. They estimated Bestival had the largest carbon output per ticket holder, while Glasgow’s TRNSMT had the lowest, due to having fewer parking spaces.
They calculated that festivals may be able to halve their overall carbon emissions by reducing car parking by 70% and providing more options for travel, such as train, coach or active travel, such as cycling.
Though the figures were very approximate, as no data on carbon emissions caused by travel to festivals has been collected, researchers estimated reducing car use for Glastonbury by 20% could save about 400 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions if reduced car use was replaced by train and shuttle bus arrival.
The research was commissioned by ACT 1.5, an independent group of event producers supported by the Arts Council England that came out of research in 2021 looking at decarbonisation of live music from Massive Attack and the Tyndall Centre.
The Tyndall research found “a double failure of regulation and innovation” when it comes to large live music events but that there was huge potential for reducing emissions by incrementally reducing the number of private vehicles audiences used to get to the venue.
ACT 1.5 producer Mark Donne said it was “brilliant to see a globally iconic music city like Liverpool blaze the trail for climate action” and that the Tyndall Centre research demonstrated that major music festivals were still not doing enough to tackle emissions”.
He added: “Just as in all areas of life, we must learn how to do things differently now if we have a hope in hell of keeping global warming at anything like safe levels. Urgent action has to include activities that are most popular, and that we as a society enjoy the most.”
The new licences will begin next year and will call for progressively greener measures for events held over the next five years.
