McLaren Racing is on track to meet its sustainability targets

Motorsports is hitting the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions

We’re all set for the 19th Grand Prix of the 2024 Formula season at the Circuit of the Americas, where McLaren will be defending their pole position in the constructor standings. It’s been a monumental season for the British team, with 18 podiums and 5 wins. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both won for the first time in their careers, and McLaren has won the last two races.

Alongside the incredible performances on the track, it’s been a notable season from a sustainability perspective, with McLaren Racing releasing its third sustainability report earlier in the year. They are a unique team competing in Formula 1, IndyCar, Formula E, Extreme E, and esports. McLaren Racing is also the first motorsport team to have validated science-based net-zero targets.

The team has committed to short-term targets of halving its emissions and switching to 100% renewable electricity by 2030, as well as the long-term goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2040. For 2023, its total emissions amount to 63,087 tCO2e, with 79% of that footprint linked to its Formula 1 activities. Here’s what they are doing to bring these emissions down.

Since January 2024, all of the team’s sites have been using renewable energy, and they plan to build on these efforts by installing on-site renewable energy production. McLaren Racing will also install EV charging infrastructure at its facilities, which can enable both low-carbon employee commuting and logistics.

Moving the needle for decarbonisation in Formula 1 is all about logistics. In Formula 1’s 2023 Impact Report, they disclosed that logistics account for 49% of the serie’s emissions. That is why McLaren is shifting, where possible, its freight transportation from air to sea and investing in programmes to implement both sustainable aviation and marine fuels.

McLaren Racing is bringing circularity to Formula 1

If its Formula 1 emissions are much greater than those of the other series, it’s also because McLaren Racing is a constructor in Formula 1, and with this comes emissions from a complex supply chain. Being a constructor requires sourcing car components, building upgrades throughout the season and managing the waste of materials.

In 2021, McLaren launched the ambitious project of building a fully circular Formula 1 car. For them, this means minimising the amount of resources consumed, designing waste out of manufacturing processes, and maximising the value of materials used, all without compromising the performance of their Grand Prix-winning machines.

For this project, they mapped the amount and type of materials they use throughout the season. It turns out that the total weight of 550 F1 cars is used, from the extraction of materials to their disposal. With precise data, McLaren is now equipped to identify opportunities to reduce waste, recycle materials, and implement circular practices.

At the Circuit of the Americas last year, McLaren became the first team to use recycled carbon fibre on a Formula 1 car. Given that Lando finished in P2, it’s safe to say it did not comprise performance! From an environmental point of view, using recycled carbon fibre can reduce life cycle emissions of this material by 90%, compared to sourcing virgin carbon fibre.

Building on this initiative, McLaren continues to collaborate with its suppliers to source lower-carbon alternatives to materials and identify opportunities to bring circularity to the design of their cars. For this project to be successful, both suppliers and regulators will need to be involved, ensuring that McLaren can continue its pioneering work to drive circularity in motorsports.

Motorsports can contribute to global climate change mitigation efforts

Bringing these changes to motorsports requires advocacy, and McLaren has been engaging the series organisers to design racing calendars that minimise logistics emissions. In 2023, they also led discussions with the FIA to ensure that investments in environmental initiatives could be considered outside of the F1 cost cap.

Advocating for these changes has allowed them to invest in initiatives such as scaling the use of biofuels in logistics, growing their sustainability team and launching McLaren’s Climate Contribution Programme. Acknowledging that emission reductions must be paired with carbon removal to reach Net Zero, they are partnering with leaders in restoring ecosystems and capturing carbon.

These organisations are UNDO, which permanently removes CO2 from the atmosphere with enhanced rock weathering, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which specialises in restoring coral reefs, and Mombak, an organisation developing reforestation projects in the Amazon.

“We are focused on accelerated action and cross-industry collaboration to help scale the solutions the world needs at pace.”

Kim Wilson, Director of Sustainability at McLaren Racing

McLaren Racing’s sustainability initiatives not only present opportunities to improve on-track performance but also create the possibility of influencing fans and the motorsports industry to take climate action. Pioneered by McLaren, scaling these initiatives will require the involvement of suppliers, partners, and regulators.