Reducing Carbon Footprint of a Major Music Festival
As the largest open-air music festival in Switzerland, Paléo sought to limit their environmental impact by first understanding, then acting to reduce their CO2 footprint by 25% over 5 years. ZenCO2 - a partnership between dss+ and Romande Energie - conducted an extensive audit and built a roadmap for improvement.
Context
By setting up an environmental scoreboard in 1990, the Paléo festival was a pioneer among European festivals to limit its impact on the environment. Aware of the sustainability issues, Switzerland’s largest open-air festival, Paléo Festival, which entertains 250,000 spectators every year, committed to reduce carbon footprint of the event. They needed an exhaustive understanding of their carbon footprint to develop a consistent plan towards their decarbonisation objectives.
Challenge
The Nyon festival committee set the goal to reduce 25% (3,738 tons) of CO2 emitted annually during the six days of celebration by 2027, so they needed an expert analysis and recommendations to create a consistent and realistic roadmap to follow.
Solution
The Paléo committee entrusted the dss+ ZenCO2 initiative, a partnership between dss+ and Romande Energie, to advise and support the CO2 reduction journey, starting with an energy audit of the Paléo Festival 2022, and providing decarbonisation and carbon footprint diagnosis. To achieve the 2027 objectives, the roadmap included a wide range of measures covering various aspects of the festival, such as waste recycling, efficient use of the catering equipment, energy management, water treatment, mobility and more.
“Limiting the volume of our waste, promoting a more responsible mobility and reducing our water and electricity consumption - the climate emergency encourages us to redouble our efforts to limit our impact on greenhouse gases, while raising awareness among our festival-goers and partners to involve them in our objectives.”
– Daniel Rossellat, Founder and President of the Paléo Arts et Spectacles association.
Assignment
Carbon footprint assessment and recommendations.
Offering
Sustainability assessment and roadmap.
Assignment
- In-depth understanding of carbon impact of the event;
- Set a potential electricity saving of 7% and fuel oil saving of 7.4% along with other sustainability improvements for the upcoming years.