In the battle for Formula 1 to reach Net Zero by 2030, it turns out the cars are almost beside the point.
Less than 1 percent of F1’s entire carbon footprint comes from the 22 cars circulating a track on a race weekend.
The other 99 percent – the freight, the flights, the generators, the factories – is where Ellen Jones has spent the past four years trying to make a dent.
For Jones, F1’s Head of ESG, that percentage split has shaped almost everything about how the sport approaches the problem.
“When you look at cars on track, they’re actually less than 1 percent of our carbon footprint,” she told Sector’s The Business of Formula 1 podcast.
“It also means that we have the other 99 percent that we really need to tackle. That’s what we talk about when we talk about logistics, when we talk about event energy, when we talk about our factories and facilities.”
Logistics has proven to be the most stubborn part of that 99 percent.
Getting an entire travelling circus of cars, equipment and personnel around the world, race after race, is not an easy thing to decarbonise quietly – and this year brought a genuinely new piece of the puzzle.
F1 invested in sustainable maritime fuel for the first time, as freight begins shifting away from air transport towards sea and regional hubs.
“Logistics, when you look at our data, is a key driver of our carbon footprint,” explained Jones.
“What we’ve been doing over the past few years is understanding how do we reduce that, how do we make a material difference.
“That is through reducing the distance travelled, through changing the amount that travels through remote broadcast, and then that’s also changing the mode of what travels.”
Sustainable Aviation Fuel tells a similarly steep story. Trialled in 2023 and barely covering a fifth of charter emissions by 2024, SAF coverage has now doubled year on year to 40 percent.
“We trialled SAF in 2023, then had our first real delivery year in ’24, which is about 19 percent coverage of our charter emissions,” Jones said.
“Now this year we’re at 40 percent coverage, which is great scale and progress to see in that buildup.”
Then there’s the calendar itself, the most visible and externally debated part of F1’s sustainability, and the one fans actually notice.
“It has been a multi-year effort, a labour of love, across F1 with our race promotion team, with our logistics team, with our race promoters themselves, to understand how can we reduce the distance between point A and point B,” Jones said.
“You have your consolidated European season, and then you have a more rational flow from event to event during the flyaways.”
Fans should not expect another reshuffle on that scale any time soon, though. Jones said the calendar has now reached a stable shape, even if the door for further tweaks isn’t completely closed.
“The calendar itself is in a really good position right now, so we’re not expecting major changes at this point,” she said.
“That being said, our promoters are on this journey with us, so as we look at our logistics, as we look at new events, there’s that opportunity for discussion because we now have the processes and systems in place.”
We’re focused on 2030, but that is very soon, and so we’re now looking at how we set up our strategy for 2040.
Ellen Jones
With four years left to hit the 2030 target, Jones said the next phase of the job is less about finding new ideas and more about making the ones that already work happen everywhere, all the time.
“In the next five years, it’s all about scale,” she said.
“We have trialled a large number of solutions, and we have been building them in scale. We need to do that across our solutions.
“We’re focused on 2030, but that is very soon, and so we’re now looking at how we set up our strategy for 2040.”
Listen to the full interview with Ellen Jones as part of the latest episode of The Business of Formula 1
