S Poddar
If the scenario is one of world tours by music icons to entertain masses scattered across the globe, with jets ferrying them to any destination around the world and carrying huge set-ups for their performances, then the audience also doesn’t lag behind in contributing to their carbon footprint. Amidst this, Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack issued a stark reminder to “act now” regarding the environmental cost of live music.
This Sunday in their hometown, Bristol, Massive Attack are playing a pioneering event called Act 1.5, named after the UN climate agreement reached in 2015 to cap global warming at 1.5°C. It will be powered completely with renewable energy—the “world’s first” for an event of its size, with 30,000 people due to attend. The fest also includes Massive Attack, American rap artist Killer Mike, folk from Ireland’s Lankum, and the actor-turned-musician Samantha Morton.
It’s not a talking shop, it’s a climate action accelerator,” Del Naja insists. “Some people think that our sector’s purpose is to educate about it, as if it’s not already one of the most reported issues of our time. We don’t need to talk about it—we need to act on it.”.
The concept of the environmental event was developed back in 2018, announced to the public in 2021, and then canceled for the planned performance in Liverpool because it was hosting an arms fair. Other attempts in the following years were delayed because of some health problems of the group members.
For Mark Donne, the lead producer of the show, the journey is smiled back upon: “It’s been a long journey; I was a young man once.” He identifies an “intense frustration” in Massive Attack with their industry, due to an “intransigent attitude to anything other than the decorative or superficial”. This frustration fueled a practical approach to planning the event.
Massive Attack, leaders in the UK trip-hop scene behind the hits “Unfinished Sympathy” and “Teardrop,” have commissioned research from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to roadmap how live music could become carbon neutral. The report, published by the band, now serves as a blueprint for ultra-low carbon live events.
The applicability of this report comes in most directly through its Act 1.5 festival, which will tackle emissions on transportation, food, energy, and waste. Since transport of attendees has the biggest contribution to an event’s carbon footprint by a landslide, early access to tickets was given to residents, and free electric shuttles will stitch attendees into transport hubs—there is no car park onsite deliberately. It encourages ticket holders to travel by train – some services are specially chartered for the festival – and offers a VIP experience in return.
Massive Attack has also slashed the carbon footprint of their own travel. “At the blueprint stage, the challenge was to design an exciting show that didn’t require 25 trucks to transport from place to place,” Del Naja explains. “Now, our haulage is down to two trucks, and I feel the show is more confrontational, provocative, and visually dynamic. It hasn’t lost anything—it’s gained more.” Working with documentary maker Adam Curtis and the lighting/staging collective United Visual Artists, the band talks of the show as “a transgressive leap” from what’s gone before.
Unlike so many vast outdoor shows, diesel generators won’t be powering the stages at Act 1.5. Instead, they’ll be juiced by giant rechargeable batteries. “I’d like to think that next year, all of the big stages at major festivals will be running off batteries, because that’s the look,” Del Naja says.
Vendors, mostly locals, will only sell plant-based food, and bars will be encouraging fans to bring reusable cups. Not a single gram of the event’s waste will go to a landfill, and a brand-new woodland of 19,000 native oak trees will be planted 40 miles from the festival site.
Massive Attack certainly isn’t the only band considering the environmental cost of going on tour. Billie Eilish, for example, requested only vegan food be available during her 2022 residency at London’s O2 Arena, and she’s announced several climate initiatives around her upcoming tour. Meanwhile, Coldplay announced in June that its 12-point sustainability plan had reduced the carbon emissions associated with its current world tour by 59% compared to its previous one.
“It’s important to remind ourselves.you can tour, and you can travel by train when you can,” advises Del Naja.
He added that local and national governments could perhaps also have a role in the future, looking ahead to the “inclusion of renewable energy and greener transport conditions within the licensing framework for festivals.” But Del Naja maintains that concert promoters shouldn’t stand by for regional, national, or international authorities to take the lead on emissions policies. “The tech and mechanisms to decarbonize live music already exist—so let’s get them working,” he says.
“This isn’t about pointing the finger at consumers,” he explains. “It’s about the promoters, who hold all the power in this sector and who need to do much more. They have the ability to make the change; they have the finances. What’s frustrating is knowing that people are sitting there on their hands, waiting for legislation to happen.”
Done is convinced that Act 1.5 will make money and that it might even serve as a template for the music industry as a whole, even though it is, in some senses, an experiment. “We’ll open the books; document where it all fell apart,” he says. “[This is about] demonstrating how much you can achieve in a short space of time—if you want to.” Del Naja adds that the event will dictate what Massive Attack can achieve with other promoters, nationally and abroad.
The group recently hinted in an Instagram post that Act 1.5 “may be the last time we play Bristol.” Del Naja won’t go that far, but he does concede, “There’s a sense that once we’ve done this, we probably won’t work on this scale again in this city. It’s the big one for us, and whatever we do next will be different.”
