Manchester Pride is a multi-site city centre event with some unique challenges in terms of supplying temporary power. As a city centre event, the organisers were particularly keen to reduce the contribution of the event to air pollution in the city and to try and reduce their carbon footprint.
A full review of the power requirements of Manchester Pride was carried out and the resulting plan yielded the following outcomes:
- Generator fuel consumption reduced by 27%
- Fuel consumed per audience member per day reduced to less than 1/20th of the UK industry average (from the Julies Bicycle IG Tool analysis)
- Carbon dioxide & equivalent emissions (CO2e) reduced by 64 %
- Total number of generators deployed was reduced by 25%
- Generators downsized by 250kVA against 2016 specs to improve efficiency (whilst still maintaining full energy security)
- 40% of the generators deployed ran on 100% HVO biofuel
Monitoring of the installed generators showed that they were still running below the optimum level and analysis of the results identified further fuel savings and emissions reductions that can be achieved next year.
The power plan and accurate deployment of sustainable technologies shows that significant progress can be made, even on a show with challenging site conditions and where per day fuel use is already relatively low compared to some other festivals. Manchester Pride is now definitely a low carbon event. Our ultimate aim for Manchester Pride is for it to be a Zero Air Pollution event within 3 years.
Michael Leaver – Senior Event Manager, Manchester Pride 2017:
Their processes for advancing information from suppliers ensured a smooth transition to our new power supplier & enabled them to deliver to a high standard. In line with Manchester Pride’s aspirations to make a greener production, there was a real focus on ways to reduce our impact & we were pleased to see a significant reduction in fuel consumption & CO2 emissions.
