BUKC goes Carbon Neutral
As of 1st January 2023, the CO2 emissions from every lap completed in a Club100 kart will now be offset via carbon offsetting programmes partnered with leading institutions such as the University of Oxford.
Why?
We believe that we all have our part to play in limiting our CO2 emissions where possible and it has been a long-term goal of Club100 to take its responsibility to the planet seriously.
In fact, Club100 is already one of the most effective ways to race in high performance karts while keeping emissions to a minimum. The Club100 fleet of karts is used by more than 2300 people instead of each of those people owning, maintaining and transporting their own kart to events. The tyres used are endurance tyres that last as long as possible before being recycled. There is an economy of scale that applies to Club100 that helps to keep the environmental impact of running motorsport events to a minimum for more than 2300+ people each year.
It is now time to go one step further and offset the CO2 emissions generated from each and every lap completed in a Club100 kart and the emissions from the transport of our kart fleet to and from every event.
How?
Club100 have teamed up with a company called Wren, a company that specialises in the offsetting of CO2 emissions for both individuals and businesses.
Wren provide tools to help individuals and businesses calculate and then pay for the offsetting of their CO2 emissions. Wren’s projects are backed by leading institutions such as the University of Oxford, the Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard in Climate Security and Sustainable Development.
We have calculated that Club100 emitted 164 tonnes of CO2 in 2022. How does that compare?
Club100’s C02 Emissions
For the 2022 season we recorded the number of litres of fuel the karts used over the course of the racing year. We also did the same for all of our staff as they travel to and from the Club100 / BUKC events. We came to a figure of 71,168 litres of petrol were used over the course of the 2022 season. Each litre of petrol emits 2.31kg of C02 per litre of petrol consumed (on average). This works out as 164,398KG of CO2 emissions, i.e. 164.4 tonnes of CO2.
Should Club100 operate at all?
Of course it should. Nearly all activities these days require some kind of energy expenditure and you would be surprised about the CO2 emissions associated with every day luxuries such as drinking a pint of beer or a cup of coffee.
Check out this infographic below which shows the equivalent CO2 emissions produced by a whole host of activities:
Do we want to live in a world where there is no fun? Of course not. Can we play our part in reducing emissions? Absolutely, it’s the right thing to do.
Why not battery power?
Right now the energy density of batteries are simply not high enough to work for a company such as Club100 where our karts often have to run up to an hour before needing to be refuelled.
We have calculated that if we were able to use batteries to power the Club100 fleet, even when taking into account the efficiency of internal combustion engines vs batteries, the batteries alone would weigh over 125KG to give each kart enough power to last more than an hour of constant use. Compare this to 7.3kg of petrol required to power a Club100 kart for over an hour, it simply wouldn’t be possible to add that much weight to a Club100 kart without turning them into tanks and that is before we even consider the safety implications of carrying such a huge amount of additional weight.
Furthermore, we would need at least 3 fleets of karts (possible 4); while one is racing, the others would be charging and the economics of such a setup simply do not stack up. Currently, UK kart circuits do not have the facilities to provide such large electricity demands without resorting to using giant diesel generators. Battery technology is improving but at the moment, not at a fast enough rate.
Batteries have a huge role in powering karts at indoor rental karting venues, where sessions are typically 10 minutes or less, and the performance requirements are far less than they are in Club100. Team Sport Indoor Karting, the largest network of indoor karting centres, are nearly half way through a process of converting all of their venues to fully electric karts by 2026, while at the same time ensuring that the company is fully carbon neutral. Similarly manufacturers such Biz Karts (the UK’s largest manufacturer of karts), are highly focussed on providing battery powered karts to arrive-and-drive indoor and outdoor karting venues. In fact more than 70% of the karts they produce now are battery powered.
Perhaps one day the energy density of batteries will increase significantly enough to enable a transition from petrol to battery powered high performance kart racing for a setting such as Club100 but we are not in any way near there yet.
Until such a time, we will continue to offset our CO2 emissions while also looking forward to another development in the near future; E-fuels.
E-Fuels
E-fuels are hydro-carbon based fuels (like petrol) where the fuels are generated by a mixture of renewable electricity, water and CO2 extracted from the air or biomass or municipal waste. The CO2 is essentially extracted from the atmosphere, packaged up into a fuel using renewable electricity, which is then combusted and released back to the environment. The whole process promises a net-zero carbon loop and near enough the same energy density as traditional fossil fuels.
It is our belief that E-fuels will form a huge part of the energy mix in the future, in particular within scenarios requiring high performance such as motorsport, trucking, shipping and aviation.
Motorsport has an important part to play in the development of e-fuels and indeed companies such as Formula 1 and Porsche area leading the way in their development. Club100 are keeping a keen eye on e-fuels and it may be sooner rather than later that the business moves over to the use of e-fuels for our race events.
You can find out more about Formula 1’s quest to create their own e-fuel at:
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