100% Renewable Energy-Powered Music Festival Announced by Massive Attack

The Bristol, England-based music collective Massive Attack has announced a one-day music festival for Bristol. What makes this festival stand out from others is that it will be powered entirely by renewables: solar energy and battery power.

The festival, called Act 1.5, will take place on August 25, 2024 in Clifton Down and will be the collective’s first performance in the UK in 5 years, Pitchfork reported.

The Act 1.5 festival is part of Massive Attack’s partnership with Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The collective and the Tyndall Centre are seeking to make live music more sustainable by lowering emissions related to these events.

As The Guardian reported, festival organizers will be vetting vendors, prioritizing those that don’t serve meat and those that source produce locally for the goods that will be sold at the event. After the show ends, the organizers plan to create a “climate-resilient woodland plantation in the south-west region.”

Overall, Massive Attack hope this event sets the stage for other live music events to follow. Robert “3D” Del Naja, a founding member of the collective, noted that the technology is available to make live music events more environmentally friendly.

“We’re chuffed to play our home city again and to be able do it in the right way,” Del Naja shared in a statement. “In terms of climate change action there are no excuses left; offsetting, endless seminars and diluted declarations have all been found out — so live music must drastically reduce all primary emissions and take account of fan travel.”

Act 1.5 tickets will go on general sale on December 8 at 10 a.m. GMT, but those living locally to the event site (in Bristol, Bath or the surrounding Gloucestershire, Swindon and Taunton postcodes) will get priority access in a pre-sale that begins 10 a.m. GMT on December 6 to help minimize travel emissions for fans.

Mark Donne, a filmmaker who has worked with Massive Attack in the past, told the Guardian that 65% to 85% of live music event emissions are linked to fans traveling to the venue.

“This will be the first show that meaningfully deals with that,” Donne told the Guardian.

In addition to giving priority ticket access to people who live local to the festival site, festival organizers will provide further incentives, to be announced in 2024, for people to travel by train. Electric buses will be available to shuttle people to Bristol city center and the Bristol Temple Meads train station, BBC reported. The show will also include secure bike parking.

Massive Attack has been championing for sustainability in the music industry for many years, including by creating a sustainable roadmap for live music events with Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The new festival is expected to be the lowest emissions live music event of its size.

Carly McLachlan, professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said in a statement, “This is precisely the type of transformative approach that we need to see more of in the live music sector and indeed every sector; one that has the collaboration and vision to reduce emissions across all areas of impact and working beyond the areas you directly control to unlock the systemic change we urgently need to deliver on our Paris Agreement commitments.”