The environmental cost of motor racing.
Chrissie Brady wrote on the blog recently:
Since Governments are so concerned about the environment, I am left wondering why motor sports have not been banned. I wonder what the carbon print of F1, Speedway, Indie Racing, TT racing etc is? Surely it is common sense to stop them, or are other governments also in the pay of F1?
Putting aside the sentiment of her last sentence, we thought it made a good subject for iPM to investigate.
It transpires that only a few weeks ago, the FIA - the governing body for motor sports - issued a Green Motoring Plan , which will be discussed at this week's G8 Environmentally Friendly Vehicles Conference in Dresden.
F1Fanatic has blogged about the green aspects of motor racing while Wired noted earlier this month that the FIA agreed a 10-year freeze on engine development. F1Fanatic thinks this is the right idea, but the wrong approach.
The noted environmentalist George Monbiot has written previously that sports like motor racing are incompatible with efforts to cut carbon emissions - a claim flatly denied by Energy Efficient Motorsport.
I'm still working to come up with some sort of figure for the actual carbon footprint of Motor Sports. Any thoughts and pointers are welcome in the comments section below.
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Comments
Marc
Frankly, I see no reason why Motor Sport should be singled-out vs any other "unnecessary" human activity which involves the creation of a carbon footprint
What, I wonder is the footprint of the BBC and other broadcasters..? And, of course, no broadcasters, no sports (amongst other things) Now, there's a thought...
Anyway, the company below, which fuels Ferrarri and Ducatti almost certainly does have a good idea of motorsport's footprint. As do other motorsport oil company sponsors
But, will they tell anyone..?
Interstingly on this company's "Home" page, we find
links to "Shell Motorsport" directly under the link to "Envoirenment and Society"
http://www.shell.com/
Formula 1 has been carbon neutral since 1997 (and WRC since 2001) according to this article: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/56953
This is not to mention technologies such as kinetic energy recovery systems (re-using energy from braking that would otherwise be wasted), advances in fuel efficiency and suchlike which come about as a result of the research in motor sports.
But even putting aside carbon emissions, the social costs of banning motor sports would surely be massive. Many of the life-saving safety features that are standard on today's road cars will have benefited from the research put into motor racing. Indeed, given that we have seen an F1 driver survive a 75g impact this season, the real scandal is the fact that more of the safety advances made in F1 are not crossing over into road cars when around a million people are dying on public roads around the world every year.
You certainly won't make road cars any more environmentally friendly by banning motor sports. But who knows what life-saving and energy efficiency-improving technologies will be invented, developed and improved by motor sport engineers in the future?