As one of Europe’s largest jazz festivals, and leading carnival arts promoters, we pride ourselves on internationalism but recognise that our current international programming models are not sustainable long term. Emissions from travel currently represent the most significant part of our carbon footprint and we are committed to reducing this.  

In the short term, the biggest gains will be made by introducing a policy of no flights for staff or artists within the UK and where possible encouraging European artists to travel by train or boat.  

In the medium to long term, we will undertake a study of our programming methodologies and international artist programming policies. This will help us to understand how we can retain similar levels of internationalism and output whilst continuing to reduce our emissions. This will include the introduction of residency-based programmes and new policies giving preference to international artists who plan on delivering a number of performances across the UK. We will also continue to invest in and expand on our digital output and our relationships with strategic partner jazz festivals in Europe to look at new digital commissioning and sharing agreements.  

Apart from travel EJBF have action plans in place to reduce emissions in all areas of operations including: 

• Committing to only working with venues and hotels with strong green policies  

• Investing in paperless marketing 

• Reducing the carbon footprint of productions by, where necessary, utilising electric vehicles, battery operated generators and locally sourcing all backline requirements 

Targets:  

In 2022 EJBF will deliver projects delayed by the pandemic and expects to match the 2019 emissions. In 2023 we anticipate halving our emissions and from then we have committed to an annual minimum 10% reduction 

Baseline (taken from 2019): 479,419.07 Total KGCo2 

2022 Standstill: 479,419.07 Total KGCo2 

2023 Reduction Target: 431,477.16 Total KGCo2 

2024 Reduction Target: 388,329.45 Total KGCo2 

2025 Reduction Target: 349,496.50 Total KGCo2 

2026 Reduction Target: 314,546.85 Total KGCo2