Around the time Formula E visited the lovely Swiss town of Bern for the penultimate race weekend of the 2018/19 season, I found myself in the middle of an interview after the pre-race media pen. Talking to Austrian public broadcaster ORF for a radio production, I was asked about the environmental impact of the all-electric racing series.

Cynics would argue that in Formula E it’s pretty much just the race cars that don’t harm our planet. FE uses diesel-guzzling lorries to build the street circuits, teams mostly fly in their personnel on planes and the electricity used to power the Allianz E-Village is, as opposed to the juice used to charge the cars, in some cases still sourced from a significant amount of fossil fuels (although this might change in 2020).

All these – in my eyes very valid – points of criticism became a sudden reality for FE officials when on the Thursday before the Bern race, political pressure groups protested FE’s environmental and social impact by cycling around the circuit. Sadly, they not only expressed their frustration by angrily pedalling up and down the hill but by also destroying parts of the trackside banners. It caused quite the stir on Friday morning.

Why supporting FE isn’t enough

“No sporting event will ever be 100 percent environmentally friendly,” I said in the ORF interview, thinking about how good of a news tile that would be. Because let’s face it, the massive impact of the event production can’t be offset by simply having 22 non-polluting cars go ’round in circles.

However, that doesn’t mean FE can’t play a pivotal role in protecting our planet. As a sort of ambassador for a good cause, our favourite electric racing series is vital in pushing forward the social and cultural change necessary to end the climate crisis. Formula E won’t save the world. But it might make you reconsider your lifestyle – and that’s what I always understood to be the main purpose of the series.

Formula E won’t save the world. But it might make you reconsider your lifestyle.

According to an independent report by EY on the impact of Formula E, the series could contribute to additional sales of 77 million EVs by 2040, a drop of 900 million tonnes of CO2 and generate savings of more than 25 million USD on health-care costs related to respiratory and cardiological conditions.

Save the world, but do it with a concept

Nevertheless, I think FE could go a lot further than “simply showing how fun electric cars can be.” The job doesn’t just end there, although promoting EVs of course will always (and rightly so) be FE’s primary objective. Leading the way by reducing air miles through designing a well-structured calendar can set a great precedent (ahem…), just like showing how to minimise single-use plastic/bamboo cutlery in catering, offering more vegetarian meal options or recycling batteries.

And then of course there’s offsetting carbon. A LOT goes into the international trade with carbon and it seems awfully confusing at first, but in its most basic form, offsetting carbon emissions is not much more than giving voluntary donations to projects that work on renewable energies (wind, solar, hydro power), reforestation, updating power plants, collecting methane, increasing energy efficiency of buildings and more.

Plant a tree!

If you can’t reduce your own emissions, offsetting emissions is a decent way to reduce your environmental impact. However, and this is the important bit, offsetting all the greenhouse gases you emit by donating some cash will. not. be. enough.

Offsetting should merely be part of a much bigger concept, at the centre of which must be the overall reduction of your direct environmental impact. Carbon neutrality starts with cutting emissions, carbon offsets can make up for the rest.

Having said that, planting a tree or two as part of your “action plan” always helps. They are great at literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into that sweet, sweet oxygen. And more trees = less CO2.

Let’s run the numbers

So even if we consider that planting trees will never be enough, let’s – just for the thrill of it – pull out our calculators we haven’t used since that GCSE maths exam. How many trees would Formula E have to plant if they wanted to offset their unavoidable emissions?

According to Formula E’s Season 4 sustainability report1, the all-electric racing series contributed to the emission of 32,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases in 2017/18. “CO2-equivalent” means that for statistical purposes the impact of methane (28x “worse” than CO2), nitrogen oxide (265x worse than CO2) or hydrocarbons (677 to 12,400x worse than CO2) has been converted into CO2 terms.

The impact of one tonne of methane emitted = the impact of 28 tonnes of CO2. You get the idea.

Trees, however, can’t do much with methane, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons. And as only part of those 32,000 tonnes of CO2e gases actually are carbon dioxide, trees won’t nearly be enough to compensate FE’s greenhouse gas emissions. For the sake of this thought experiment though, let’s assume all 32,000 tonnes of CO2e were pure CO2.

Greenhouse Gas 100-year global warming potential (compared to CO2) Carbon dioxide 1 Methane 28 Nitrous oxide 265 Hydrofluorocarbon-32 677 Perfluoromethane 6,630 Chlorotrifluoromethane 13,900 Sulfur hexafluoride 23,500

Source: IPCC, AR5 (p. 73-79)

1.4 million trees per season

On average, one tree absorbs around 21,77 kgs of carbon each year (of course depends on the tree species, how long the tree lives, the location and various other factors but let’s stick with that number for now). 21,77 kilos are 0.02177 tonnes. So far, so good.

32,000 divided by 0.02177 would result in FE needing to plant 1,469,913 trees to offset season 4. Adding in their S1 (25,000 tonnes CO2e) / S2 (12,000 tonnes CO2e) / S3 (13,500 tonnes CO2e) sustainability reports, we could plant another 2,319,706 saplings for a total of 3,789,619 new trees to offset FE’s hypothetical CO2 emissions so far.

Formula E would need to plant 3.8 million trees to offset their emissions.

How much would that cost?

The costs of such an endeavour of course depend on what projects you’d be supporting. The price tag for a sequestration project differs from one region to the next. Some organisations plant a tree for just £0.08 while others want up to £45 for a sapling.

And so, costs for the plantation of 3.8 million new trees could vary between £285,000 and £160.1m. Assuming that an average tree would to cost you about £4,30, FE might have to invest around £16.4m into such a tree project.

There’s a catch

However, things aren’t quite so easy (apart from the obvious fact that in real terms we’re not talking about 32,000 tonnes CO2 but 32,000 tonnes of CO2e).

At the end of the day, Formula E still is a profit-oriented business. Investors want to make money. And we will have to assume that they won’t be too chuffed to see the series “wasting money” on planting a few trees.

Financing the plantation of 3.8 million trees is of course a great PR stunt. Still, I don’t think it’d be easy for FE go ahead with that tree-planting project, as a (in business terms) “low-priority” £16.4m investment probably is, especially at a stage at which the series still is not making a profit, about £16.4m too much.

Let’s get creative!

To possibly convince investors of financing reforestation projects, you’d need to find less costly but more fan-immersive ways to plant trees. So what if FE invested in a sapling for every time a driver activates their Attack Mode (S5 potential: 1,650 trees)? Or every time a driver successfully finishes a lap (S5: 8,802 trees)? Or even better: One sapling per FANBOOST vote given by a fan?

Why not directly involve investors by getting super creative with ways to plant trees? One tree for every trackside fan (S4: 476,000 trees), with all the fun greening being presented to you by Mercedes-Benz EQ in association with CBMM Niobium brought to you by the official beer and cider partner Heineken in partnership with BMWi with support from Waitrose Petersborough and Omologato Watches.

How about one tree for every tweet from the @FIAFormulaE account (S5: 1,866 trees)? One tree for every new Facebook like (ca. 1.6 million trees)? One tree for every time Buemi, JEV or Evans use a swear word (estimate: 2,000 trees)? One for every time a journalist complains about the temperature control in the media centre or embarrasses themselves in an interview (probably infinite new trees)?

Reforestation projects will become more important

Anyway, I digress. Of course, planting trees must only be part of a broader solution to reduce Formula E’s overall environmental impact. But with the Amazon currently being shrouded in plumes of smoke and the northern hemisphere experiencing one heatwave after the other, the significance of reforestation projects will only increase in the next few years.

And even if Formula E might be aiming to be fully carbon-neutral by 2020: Why not take things a bit further and aim for becoming carbon-negative by 2025? Maybe sporting events can one day be 100 percent environmentally friendly after all?

Even so, planting trees should be nothing more than a first step. But it’d be a good one.

1 No longer available for download.