Firstly congratulations to Lewis Hamilton on his great achievement. Despite not being a fan of F1 it was a great race. Seeing how much fuel the cars use and being sponsored by companies such as Shell it made Ethical and Green wonder about how green the sport could ever be and what effect this would have on driving as a whole.
It has been estimated that 20 cars emit around 9,150 kg of carbon emissions per race which is quite staggering! So that’s the cars. What about all the lighting, power cables, tourists who travel from all over the world….When you add it up the carbon emissions of an F1 race are HUGE!!
We all know that a huge amount of money is invested into F1 so if they go green the investment into new technologies could benefit us all. Max Mosley, president of the International Automobile Federation is keen for the sport to cut down on it’s carbon footprint and this season F1 cars had to have some biofuel in their tanks. Practice laps have also been dropped to stop wasting fuel. This is great but what next?
Well next season clean technology systems to harvest kinetic energy from deceleration and to capture heat from machines engines will become mandatory. Hotels in cities where the races are held should also stand up and be counted. For example the Singapore Freeport skylounge at the Fullerton Hotel built a solar canopy to offset half the energy it used to entertain its 250 guests during the Singapore Grand Prix. Wouldn’t it be great if other hotels took part in this.
It’s great to see that F1 racing is taking onboard it’s responsibilities to the planet. However, in a sport where efficiency isn’t a priority it will be interesting to see how the proposed changes to the sport will be received by the makers of the cars.
Maverick said,
December 3, 2008 @ 11:06 am
A couple of points either way.
Firstly, emissions from Formula 1 (along with the World Rally Championship) are currently offset by the FIA. Obviously this does not include the contribution made by the spectators – they’re left to deal with their own conscience.
Clean technology next season: Firstly heat recovery is not to be introduced yet. Even if it will, it is unlikely to filter down to the ordinary road user as the energy recovered will be negligible on most cars due to the much higher fuel economy. Braking energy is to be recovered BUT it will be used on top of the existing power for short bursts of extra speed. So in itself this does not result in a cleaner car although the technology may filter down to road users. However, it also may not since car companies are ahead of the game, although F1 may move to smaller engines as the technology is developed. I’d point you in the direction of this article which covers that issue in greater depth: http://www.pitlanefanatic.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=361
So all-in-all, Formula 1 isn’t as bad as is widely thought BUT in attempt to improve that image it is doing stuff that will actually have no effect on any carbon footprint (and may actually cause more of an environmental issue).