{"id":19910,"date":"2012-11-15T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T16:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=19910"},"modified":"2013-11-15T14:52:56","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T20:52:56","slug":"why-a-truly-green-car-race-might-not-be-possible-for-formula-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/11\/15\/why-a-truly-green-car-race-might-not-be-possible-for-formula-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a Truly ‘Green’ Car Race Might Not Be Possible for Formula One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Clive Rose\/Getty Images<\/p>

A Red Bull Racing car wins the Korean Formula One Grand Prix in October.<\/p><\/div>\n\n

Three model cars sit side-by-side on the windowsill of Zach Baumer’s office in East Austin, memories of a childhood spent with his family at Indy 500 races.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up in Indianapolis, I just have sort of a thing for cars,” he says. “Not that I think we should be driving single occupancy vehicles! But … it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

There’s a reason Baumer might sound quick to qualify his fondness for horsepower and tight turns. As manager of the city’s\u00a0Climate Protection Program<\/a>\u00a0he’s in charge of mitigating the environmental impact of another well known car race taking place in Austin this fall: the\u00a0Formula One Grand Prix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The history of Texas and Formula One is a long and tangled one. State lawmakers laid the groundwork for bringing the race to Austin in 2009, when they passed a law allowing tax subsidies to help finance the event. But things got complicated when the City of Austin was approached to pony up some of its own subsidies. With Austin’s city council divided on whether to welcome the race, F1 organizers agreed to sweeten the deal. In what they called a first-of-its-kind partnership, they agreed to make Formula One ‘greener.’<\/p>\n

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Zach Baumer runs the City of Austin's Climate Protection Program.<\/p><\/div>\n

That’s where Baumer and his team come in. Their job is to work with race organizers and environmental groups to calculate and mitigate as much of the environmental impact of the race as possible. And that involves some tricky arithmetic.<\/p>\n

First, you have to figure out what’s using up resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there are on-site generators that will be used, there\u2019s electricity that will be used, there\u2019s food, there\u2019s waste, there\u2019s water that\u2019s used,” says Baumer. “Then there’s the race cars actually going around the track using fuel.”
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Then the real challenge in figuring out how to offset emissions comes outside the track. Some 120,000 people are expected to attend the race. That means more cars on Texas roads, more AC units running, more lights being turned on and off, and more flights in and out of the airport. All of which requires additional power.<\/p>\n

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