Global renewable energy company Low Carbon and the Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team have called on sports teams around the world to switch to renewable energy to tackle the climate crisis.
As world leaders, policy makers and environmental experts gather at COP28 in Dubai for its Energy Day, Low Carbon and Emirates GBR launched a first-of-its-kind Portable Off-Grid Power Blueprint to encourage other sports teams and industries to adopt renewable energy into their operations. Sportspeople hold huge influential power, and by taking proactive action to tread lightly on the planet and incorporate renewable energy, they can inspire people across the globe to do the same.
The Blueprint provides organisations with the knowledge, information and contacts needed to integrate renewable energy into their operations. Low Carbon and Emirates GBR decided to create the blueprint due to the success of the bespoke solar and wind installation developed as part of their partnership. The installation, that consists of 38 solar panels and two micro wind turbines, travels around the world to Sail Grand Prix events with Emirates GBR and has taken the Team’s operations off-grid, while also producing enough energy to power other SailGP Teams. It has created 1,376kWh of clean energy across the first five events of SailGP Season 4, which is equivalent to removing 400kg/CO2.
The installation was designed by Low Carbon’s engineers working in partnership with the Emirates GBR Team and is made up of solar panels totalling up to 16kW. This has the potential to provide enough clean energy to power nearly 13,000 fridge-freezers for a whole day. The Emirates GBR SailGP Team and Low Carbon partnered in January 2023 as the two entities wanted to harness the power of sport and athletes to inspire positive change on a global scale. The Portable Off-Grid Power Blueprint is the next step in the partnership and will enable other sports teams and industries to make use of readily available technology and join the fight against the climate crisis.
The Blueprint has been published as part of Energy Day at the COP28 conference and ahead of the final SailGP race of 2023 taking place in Dubai on 9 and 10 December.
Emirates GBR Driver and CEO, Sir Ben Ainslie, said: “As a sports team we are privileged to be able to travel around the world doing what we love, but we are aware that this has an impact. As a Team, we wanted to take action and incorporate renewable energy into our operations so that we were not drawing from resources of the communities at event locations. Our partnership with Low Carbon enabled us to create a unique mobile solar and wind installation that takes us off-grid at events. It has been a huge success and we decided to share all the learnings from creating and implementing this to other sports teams and industries to make it easy and simple for them to adopt renewable energy. There is no reason to not take action, climate change is happening now and by working together we can make a difference.”
Founder and Chief Executive of Low Carbon, Roy Bedlow said: “Sport has the ability to inspire like nothing else and we are delighted to strengthen our partnership with Emirates GBR through the launch of our renewable energy blueprint. Low Carbon is focused on creating as much renewable energy as possible to tackle climate change and we want to use our platform as a sustainable company to encourage the shift away from fossil fuels without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
