AUSTIN, Texas — The Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival is looking at new ways to be sustainable, and this year, that means powering one stage in a way they’ve never done before that’s set to save fuel and cut down on emissions.
The IHG Hotel and Resorts Stage, as well as some backstage areas and lounges, will be powered on a hybrid-battery system. C3P Presents, the event management company that puts on ACL Music Festival, compared the system to a hybrid car.
“There’s batteries that are paired with a generator, diesel generator engines that are running on biodiesel, and the batteries are powering everything,” said Jake Perry, the Director of Operations and Sustainability for C3 Presents.
When battery power starts to run low, generators will automatically kick on until the batteries are fully charged again. They say the process results in about a 60-75% reduction in runtimes, which reduces their overall emissions.
“We're doing everything we can to both bring this world class festival to Austin and limit our impact as much as possible,” Perry said.
Typically, since music festivals happen in locations like parks that don’t have typical power infrastructure, most stages have to be powered by diesel generators.
The festival, along with C3 Presents, have been partnering with REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project, testing out this technology for about a year. C3 used it for the first time at this year's Lollapalooza.
Now this will be the first time it’s used at ACL.
“We care about the people that come and enjoy our shows and work on our shows, and we want to see a world and an industry in which we have longevity and we can control some of the emissions issues that we may be having,” Perry said.
Since the technology is fairly new, Perry says it still comes with a high price tag. But they’re hopeful that as more festivals start using it, it will become a more common practice.
“As we are investing in it, as our partners like Reverb are investing in it, as other people in the industry are investing in it, the demand continues to rise, but the investment in turn makes more supply readily available to us,” Perry said.
Even though it is costly, it’s something important that C3 wants to invest in for the future of their music festivals, especially here in Austin to preserve Zilker Park.