Coldplay’s “Music Of The Spheres” world tour is all about climate-friendly tour planning. The band announced this some time ago. Now the general conditions are in place – and last week an agreement was reached with the Finnish energy company Neste.
Neste claims to be the world’s largest producer of sustainable biofuels, which may have attracted him to Coldplay’s tour management. But the criticism was not long in coming.
According to a study by Friends of the Earth, the company’s palm oil suppliers cleared at least 10,000 hectares of forest in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia between 2019 and 2020.
How green can a Coldplay tour get anyway?
Carlos Calvo Ambel, a senior director of Transport and Environment (an umbrella organization of European NGOs working towards sustainable transport), said in a statement: “Neste is cynically using Coldplay to improve its reputation. It’s a company associated with the kind of deforestation that would horrify Chris Martin and his fans. It’s not too late, they should end their partnership with Neste now and focus on really clean solutions instead.”
Ambel also referred to the band as “useful idiots for greenwashing”.
A statement from Coldplay said: “When we announced this tour we said we would do our best to make it as sustainable and climate friendly as possible, but it would be a long process. That’s still the case. We cannot claim that we have already done everything right.”
The band continues: “Before we appointed Neste as a supplier for these biofuel products, we received their guarantee that they would not use any new materials in their production – most importantly no palm oil. We still believe they only use renewable waste products like cooking oil and by-products from pulp production.”
Neste responds with a confession
Hanna Leijala, a Neste spokeswoman, tried to limit the damage. “No conventional palm oil was used as a raw material for our collaboration with Coldplay,” she said in a statement, adding: “Neste plans to reduce conventional palm oil to 0% of its global use of renewable raw materials by the end of 2023.”
However, Neste declined to specify the specific percentage of palm fatty acid distillates (PFAD) in the fuel blend, citing “contractual and competitive reasons”.
T&E admits that most EU shipments of used cooking oil are imports from countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and China, and the composition of the product may also be fake due to higher European market prices. However, the use of animal fats also raises questions about methane emissions from agriculture, since most fats come from industrial agriculture.
Coldplay and BMW
Coldplay was recently criticized for a cooperation with BMW, which is said to provide 40 rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles for the concerts. The collaboration is pure greenwashing for the automaker, which is trying to block the EU from setting a 2035 deadline for zero-emission vehicles, said Eoin Dubsky, senior campaign manager at nonprofit Sum Of Us.
Coldplay may have underestimated the complexity of their quest to reduce their own touring carbon footprint, although Chris Martin backtracked in a BBC interview last year.
A tree for every ticket
In addition to the cooperation with global companies, which of course are primarily concerned with profit, there is at least one climate campaign on tour that is guaranteed to have an undeniable benefit.
A tree will be planted for every ticket sold for Coldplay’s current world tour, which includes a kinetically powered dance floor.