Christopher BarrettLive Nation Entertainment (LNE) is working to connect five of its UK festivals to the national grid this summer and is creating guidelines to help enable other operators to do so.
Speaking at the Access All Areas Conference & Awards (pictured), LNE head of sustainability (UK&I) Victoria Chapman said that switching festivals to renewable energy sources is a priority project as part of its Green Nation target of reducing its scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.
She said all venues controlled by Live Nation-owned Academy Music Group had been switched to renewable energy sources, and the push to get festivals connected followed a move to 100% biofuel at its events last year.
“In the long term we are looking to connect our festivals to the grid,” said Chapman. “We are looking at five key sites this year and working on guidelines to how festivals can do it themselves. We’re finding a lot of things popping up, like costs for certain assessments to be carried out, and just want to be able to put all of our learnings together to be able to help others to go through a similar process themselves as well.”
Chapman said the first festivals sites to be connected to the grid will be ones where Live Nation has a long-term relationship with the land owners and/or has a stake in the ownership itself: “They are the easier ones to look at, but we are also making sure we’re working with sites that are owned by local authorities because they will involve different processes and requirements.”