Formula E will begin its tenth season by attending the United Nations’ COP28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai from November 30 until December 12 in a bid to persuade other sports to follow its lead on sustainability.
The open-wheel series was the first in motorsport to embrace all-electric drivetrains in 2014, and became a fully-fledged FIA world championship by its seventh season. In 2020 it became the first sport of any kind in the world to have its emissions reductions targets validated by the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), and is on course to achieve that target (a 45 percent overall reduction) by 2030.
Now, a delegation representing the series, its team, and partners will attend the UN summit to call on other elite sport leaders to “give it everything” in their sustainability efforts.
“Elite sport reaches a global audience of billions every week,” said Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds. “Athletes are among the most-followed and influential people on the planet. Collectively, we have the potential to make positive changes for a more sustainable future and encourage fans to do the same. To use popular football manager parlance, we need to ‘give it everything’.”
Formula E’s first race in 2014 took place in Beijing, and will return to China in the upcoming season for the Shanghai ePrix. In the time since that inaugural race, Formula E cars have become 75 percent more powerful, with half of the energy used in the current car – which debuted last season – coming from regenerative braking. The series has also done away with mid-race car changes (since 2018), and will introduce fast charging mid-race this season, putting the series at the forefront of electric mobility development.
But Formula E hasn’t just been about sustainability and technology development – it has been able to back both of those things up with a quality sporting product, too. Last season saw Formula E break every one of its records for overtakes, lap times, and speeds achieved in races.
