Better Live developed a tool for measuring and anticipating the carbon footprint of artist travel.
Artist transport, along with audience travel, is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the live music sector. In most studies conducted, it represents the second largest carbon impact category of a concert or festival.
This travel is nonetheless essential. Artists must reach their first show from home, then move from venue to venue throughout their tour, before finally returning home. A single tour often combines several modes of transport: train, car, van, tour bus, or plane.
If we want to reduce the environmental impact of our activities without limiting artists’ mobility, it is essential to be able to measure this travel consistently.
The programming carbon budget calculator was developed as part of the Better Live project to address this challenge. It allows venues and festivals to estimate the carbon impact of artist travel, both to produce a report on past programming and to guide future programming decisions.
This calculator does not aim to assign “carbon responsibility” to a venue. Its purpose is to provide a consistent method for distributing the impact of artist travel across the different shows of a tour, in order to enable tracking and management of lower-carbon programming.
