London Marathon Events (LME) has announced that starting this year, international marathon runners will be hit with a climate levy of £26 as part of the race’s plan to go net zero by 2030. The funds collected from the levy will be used to pay for carbon removal company CUR8 to remove 280 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. Other measures that will be implemented to reach the net-zero goal include swapping diesel generators for hydrotreated vegetable oil generators.
The organizers of the marathon have reported that they were becoming “more ambitious” with their climate targets. In addition to the climate levy, LME is looking to cut roughly 800 tonnes of carbon a year through emissions reduction and carbon removal. LME plans to encourage the use of public transportation and use electric vehicles to further reduce emissions. The organization has boosted its efforts to achieve net-zero by 2030; it had previously planned to achieve net-zero by 2040.
LME runs other events such as the Brighton Marathon and Swim Serpentine. Kate Chapman, head of sustainability for LME, said: “Clearly, we need to do everything we can to reduce those emissions. The fact that there is something that we can do then yeah, that has been a factor in helping us to be more ambitious.” Of the approximately 9920 LME participants in 2022, 95% of the emissions came from their travel, but that data is not typically included in the net-zero calculations. Thus, LME said it would use the “fairly blunt instrument” of the £26 climate levy. The company it is paying, CUR8, uses a variety of methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, such as improving soil and planting forests.
Carbon removal has garnered some criticism, with detractors saying it provides a false sense of security and takes focus away from reducing emissions in the first place. However, Mark Stevenson, one of CUR8’s co-founders, stated that the company does not tell anyone “you can claim net zero using us, because the language is evolving.” He explained, “What we say is you can claim that you are removing this amount of carbon on your journey to net zero.”
In conclusion, the climate levy is LME’s newest effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the London Marathon and move closer to a net-zero future. By implementing other sustainable solutions and partnering with carbon removal companies, LME’s targets of reaching net-zero by 2030 might be achievable
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