Did Massive Attack just pull off the greenest concert ever?

On the west side of the English city of Bristol is a large public green space popular with runners, families and kite flyers. The site, Clifton Downs, also has nearly no car parking and little infrastructure, so it was perhaps a surprising venue for Massive Attack’s Act 1.5, a one-day music festival that more than 30,000 people were expected to attend. But it was just those factors that made the site ideal for a groundbreaking show that also served as a grand experiment in a more sustainable approach to live music.

The event was a triumphant hometown return for trip-hop legends Massive Attack, who last played here five years ago. But it was also a bold statement about what can be done to dramatically cut an industry’s environmental impact with the right technology, creative thought and a lot of determination. In the words of Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, it was “a blueprint for the way live music can be produced”.

The music industry in the UK alone generates about 540,000 tonnes of CO₂e (carbon dioxide or other gases with the equivalent planet-heating impact) a year, most of which comes from live shows. The members of Massive Attack have long been concerned about this – they’ve even raised the question of whether they should stop touring altogether.

Instead, they commissioned the University of Manchester’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to explore opportunities for significantly reducing emissions associated with live music touring, starting with reviewing their own practices. Tyndall Centre researchers identified a whole variety of potential wins, particularly around transport, energy, food and waste. This seemingly disparate group of academics and musicians then jointly published a Roadmap to Super Low Carbon Live Music to show the rest of the industry what was possible.

Act 1.5 was a dramatic showcase of this work. The name is a reference to the global warming threshold that countries agreed to try to stick to in 2015 following years of fraught negotiations, and which we now stand on the brink of exceeding. Beyond 1.5°C, the risks of heatwaves, extreme weather, rising sea levels and other impacts of climate change all greatly increase.

During a tour, the largest proportion of emissions comes from audience travel. The venue for Act 1.5 was therefore deliberately chosen because of its limited car parking so that walking, cycling and public transport were the only realistic options for most people. Priority was also given to locals, with sales opening up exclusively to people with a Bristol postcode for the first 48 hours.

To support people’s travel, organizers arranged electric buses from Newport Bus, powered by renewable electricity-charged batteries from battery specialist Zenobe Energy, to shuttle people from the city center without using fossil fuels. Those traveling from further afield were encouraged to arrive by train with the promise of a dedicated bar and toilets at the venue, for those who had a valid ticket.

Once they arrived, music fans saw a number of other big differences to mainstream festivals. All the food on offer was plant-based, avoiding the enormous carbon footprint associated with meat production. There were clearly labeled recycling bins to separate out different types of waste, including food, and all food containers and cutlery were compostable. At the bars, drinkers were encouraged to bring their own reusable cups. Further on were compost toilets, with cups of sawdust to be sprinkled on after use. Other changes were less immediately visible but had an even bigger impact. The main stage was powered by a giant one megawatt battery array from UK renewable energy provider Ecotricity, which is headquartered in nearby Stroud. It was charged up by solar and wind and transported to the concert site.

The rest of the site, including food stands and bars, was powered by ‘second life batteries’, previously used in electric buses and refurbished by Zenobe.

Powering UK festivals takes more than 12 million liters of diesel a year, according to research by non-profit A Greener Future. This not only contributes to climate change but makes the air dirtier to breathe and is noisy and smelly. The Ecotricity battery powering the main stage alone replaced 2,000 liters of diesel that would otherwise have been needed by generators, saving 5,340 kilograms of carbon emissions, the equivalent of driving a petrol car 32,600km (20,200 miles).

Steven Meersman, founding director of Zenobe, said he hoped it would show that festivals could ditch diesel and set a precedent for more carbon-free shows to take place in the years ahead.

Speaking from the main stage, Ecotricity founder Dale Vince said that when he first had the idea of decarbonising live music the technology had not been ready. But it was now, he said, declaring it to be the “very lowest carbon footprint for a gig this size, ever”.

Vince is planning to extend this work together with the Grid Faeries initiative. As well as providing on-site battery power to festivals, they are investigating the installation of permanent grid connections and new green energy generation projects next to event sites.

A huge amount of work had also gone on behind the scenes. Massive Attack chose sound and lighting gear carefully to cut overall energy demand. And they designed their whole show to prioritize lightweight, space efficient and local equipment, so it only had to be hauled on two trucks. The band even extended the audience’s travel restrictions to themselves, taking all feasible tour routes by rail and encouraging support acts to do the same.

Of course, Massive Attack is not the only musical act to have tried to cut its climate impact. Earlier this year, members of UK band Coldplay said a sustainability plan had significantly cut emissions from their latest tour. Singer-songwriter Billie Eilish also used her 2022 world tour to promote vegan food and has been a leading figure in Reverb’s Music Decarbonization Project in the US.

But members of Massive Attack have regularly expressed frustration with what they see as the wider industry’s slow response to the climate crisis (“We don’t need to talk about, we need to act on it,” the band’s Del Naja told The Guardian last week), and intended Act 1.5 to be a showcase of what was really possible when all the stops were pulled out.

Dr Chris Jones, knowledge exchange fellow at the Tyndall Centre, said most of the concepts were replicable and scalable, with cost and availability the major remaining limiting factors. “These guys have a strong can-do attitude and bulldoze through problems in a way that you don’t get in some other sectors, which has been quite refreshing.”

Ultimately, however, it still had to be a great gig. The rest of the Act 1.5 bill included English actress turned musician Sam Morton, Irish folk group Lankum and US rapper Killer Mike, an eclectic lineup united by their willingness to use their platform to speak out about injustice, whether environmental, racial or social.

Massive Attack themselves were more circumspect during their headline set, launching straight into the music and accompanying visuals designed in collaboration with Adam Curtis and United Visual Artists. Del Naja previously said the scale of innovations and emissions reductions would “speak for themselves”. The band used the show to put a spotlight on the war in Gaza, and at one point were joined on stage by Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who spoke about the human impact of the Israeli invasion and called for peace.

Organizers say the event went without any major technical hitches. But despite Massive Attack’s attempts to lead the way on sustainability, there are still some obstacles. Festival operators and promoters remain wary of completely ditching diesel. And encouraging public transport meant being dependent on public infrastructure, not all of which went ahead as scheduled.

The band’s team did succeed in persuading the regional rail operator to put on extra evening services, a genuine feat that required months of negotiation. Still, if (like me) you wanted to catch the last train home on a Sunday night, you had to rush out in the middle of the headline set. On top of the general shuttle buses there were special electric buses to meet the extra trains – another logistical challenge – while some fans had to stand in a long and slightly disheveled queue in the rain for a regular diesel-powered bus. Nobody said running events like this would be easy.

Nonetheless, despite the classic Bristolian drizzle that pervaded the end of the day, spirits were high and talk was of the music, the atmosphere and the future.