Rachel’s Blogs

For this week’s Eco Ventures I had a chat with Valeria Maioli – the man behind the lights of Singapore’s Formula One night race.

Following last year’s event – Mr Maioli told me that there were numerous enquiries into the amount of energy used by the race.

So this year what the Motor Sport Green Power company has decided to do is to build a power production centre to produce clean energy from sources such as solar, wind etc… then feed that energy back into the grid and offset the energy used during the F1 event.

Now the project plans to not just offset the notorious night race lights – but also just about every other energy guzzling factor related to the weekend long event.

Calculating the energy used will be a feat in itself…

And I’m a bit curious and interested to see how the actual project will pull together.

Mr Maioli stated that a location is yet to be confirmed for the centre which is targeted to start up next month…discussions with potential partners is still on going – as is the financial frame work of the project.

So let’s wait and see what happens…

But just to put it in perspective, last year’s race is estimated to have used some 500 megawatt hours of energy, which is the equivalent of 0.49% of what Singapore uses in a day based on 2007 consumption patterns.

The centre itself need not be near the race track – as the concept simply relies on the amount of energy being offset regardless of the location.

Going forward the plan is to have a totally green formula one championship – and more such centres globally to offset the energy usage of such races.

Interesting concept for a sport which is founded on burning rubber and fuel for speed… I wonder where the sport will go from here?

There are various other initiatives which the industry has undertaken.

For example the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix – all cars ran on green- grooved Make Cars Green tyres for the entire weekend. And further efforts have been made to bring biofuel into the races..

For a more in depth read on some past and present green racing initiatives take a peek at this site:

http://www.makecarsgreen.com/documents/MCG_Brochure_Spreads_13_11_08.pdf

Check out more pics on the Eco Ventures Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=110632&id=104855928773&saved#/pages/ECO-VENTURES/104855928773?ref=sgm

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