The 1% fuel focus distracting F1's larger sustainability push

A vast sea of changes in Formula 1's plans for 2026 have, particularly when it comes to the powertrain and aerodynamic regulations, been discussed at great length.

But there's more beyond that, particularly as the other aspect of 2026’s plans involves F1’s desire to become a ‘net-zero carbon’ championship by 2030. In short, that means that it aims to cut any carbon emissions by 50% and to offset the rest, and F1 has stated that it is very much on track to meet its target.

And that’s a good thing, given F1’s image as a globetrotting, gas-guzzling pursuit. It’s raised further debate about the current state of F1’s regulations, with suggestions that alternative fuels could be part of a return to the pre-hybrid era, should their credentials as a cleaner source of energy allow that. There are further points to consider too, particularly in understanding whether these will really help F1’s push towards a net-zero carbon future.

Autosport has already discussed how the new fuels might look in terms of formulation and performance, but fuelling the cars sustainably is just one very small part of trying to decarbonise the entire industry...

Biofuels in use for logistics; racing just 1% of F1’s emissions

If the synthetic fuels used in the cars are the ‘figurehead’ for a lower-emissions future, what about the logistical aspect of F1? After all, only 1% of the emissions that F1 produces come from the on-track running – most of the remaining 99% is created by the very act of sending the cars, personnel, and hospitality units to every circuit. Since there’s 24 races now, that’s a lot of criss-crossing the globe on commercial flights, or shipping cars and parts out from Europe to the fly-away races.

Teams are taking a much more serious approach to their sustainability credentials away from the track. All teams on the F1 grid have the FIA’s three-star environmental accreditation, all demonstrating compliance with best practices set out in the ISO 14001 framework. F1 itself also has this, also along with the ISO 20121 for hosting sustainable events.

Mercedes has moved away from diesel-powered trucks to using hydrotreated vegetable oil

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

Each team has a different approach, and one such example includes Mercedes’ efforts to cut down on its emissions through its logistics network. All teams have access to sea freight routes, as this is less deleterious to the environment versus air freight, but Mercedes has been trialling the use of biofuel-powered trucks for the European races on the calendar. FOM with logistics partner DHL has also implemented similar measures for the same races. These are second-generation biofuels, to ensure no impact on food supply.

“The visible impact of the sport is the cars racing around the track, but it's less than 1% of the total sport's footprint,” says Mercedes’ head of sustainability Alice Ashpitel. “Actually the less glamorous side, how we get everyone and everything there to go racing 24 weekends of the year, is a huge chunk of the footprint.

“And what we're really keen to do as part of our kind of net zero strategy is tackle these biggest and most visible sources straight away. For example, in the European season where we're moving predominantly by road freight for pretty much everything there, it was really key for us to move from diesel-powered trucks to biofuel-powered trucks, so using HVO100 [hydrotreated vegetable oil] as quickly as possible.

The majority of the personnel travel on commercial airlines and charter flights. Each flight adds up and Mercedes has no way of selecting which fuel is used by the plane

“We trialled that in 2022, right at the end of the season. The key thing for us there was how can we make sure that we're sourcing the fuel, but that we're not delaying the trucks getting where they need to be, because it was a triple-header. You've got to get where you need to go, when you need to go, and then it's not affecting the performance of the trucks.

“We ran that trial and it was great because, from my perspective, it worked. We had no difference in miles per gallon when we use the HVO100, everyone got where they needed to be, which was a relief. And it showed an 88% emissions saving just on those few trucks that we did the trial on.”

Ashpitel says that Mercedes had managed to get its fuel supplier and title sponsor Petronas on board to assist with the development of fuel. Combined with the generators used at the circuit to power the team’s hospitality units, also using a similar fuel, this led to a 67% drop in emissions overall.

But, as Ashpitel points out, it’s a lot more difficult to cut emissions when it comes to air freight. “It’s one of the hardest to decarbonise sectors in the world,” she notes, particularly as the majority of the personnel travel on commercial airlines and charter flights. Each flight adds up and, of course, Mercedes has no way of selecting which fuel is used by the plane.

Flyaway races often involve air freighting components, and teams have no control over the fuel used by planes - it's the same story when transporting personnel to races

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Allied to that, demand outstrips supply by a huge margin in the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) market. Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian, head of the University of Sheffield's Energy Institute, says that “at this moment, cost [of production] is the bottleneck”, and so it’s left to airlines and other firms to invest in the “book and claim” market.

This is essentially a downpayment on sustainable aviation fuel but, instead of having it shipped to an airline’s hub (which, given the emissions, rather defeats the point) it is used by a different flight entirely. In short, it’s an offset strategy to ‘claim’ the emissions drop from another flight using SAF.

It’s not the ideal route, as offsets give the image of companies buying their way out of emissions problems. But, in the case of aviation fuel, there’s really no other way of cutting it at this moment.

“We've set ourselves the target of race team control net zero in 2030,” Ashpitel concludes. “There is a challenge in the sustainability market that there is a lot of terminology, so we've tried to really break it down simply which is that, for us, race team control is everything that happens in our scope one and two emissions. That's the direct fuel that we're burning, electricity that we're using, plus all of the scope three emissions that are associated with our going racing.

“It essentially covers all of our emissions, except the emissions associated with our supply chain of purchase goods and services and capital goods, so the products we buy in. For us, that's a 75% reduction of all of those emissions by 2030.

“We know that's incredibly ambitious, but we believe that actually you need to set really ambitious targets to push yourself forward and then kind of deliver those results because that's pushing us towards the innovative solutions, like the biofuels, like the sustainable aviation fuel, looking at weight optimisation.”

Is the "clean energy" image merely a facade?

There is the pervading existential debate over sustainable fuels’ genuine credentials as an ‘eco-friendly’ alternative to fossil fuels. On the face of it, biofuels and e-fuels are seen as not having the same environmental impact produced by drilling dead dinosaur goop out of the earth’s crust and setting fire to it for propulsion, but there are legitimate questions raised about its effectiveness towards carbon neutrality.

Firstly, let’s start with biofuels. There are many variables involved in its production, such as feedstocks and the reallocation of land to produce crops used in biofuels, and this is something that will have consequences for not only a fuel’s carbon emissions, but also on biodiversity and on the existing ecological balance.

Mercedes wants to see a 75% reduction in emissions resulting from its race team by 2030

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

The study Environmental sustainability of biofuels: a review by Harish K. Jeswani, Andrew Chilvers and Adisa Azapagic, published by The Royal Society, states that "first-generation biofuels can – on average – have lower GHG emissions than fossil fuels" if no land-use changes occur. This cites some of the deforestation in Brazil for sugar cane crops to produce bioethanol as a net negative effect on mitigating greenhouse gas production, as reduced plant life absorbs less CO2. Furthermore, the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture can produce side-effects such as soil erosion and the release of noxious fumes into the atmosphere.

Widespread use of bioethanol or ethanol-infused fuels also yields an increase in acetaldehyde emissions, defined as a Group 1 carcinogen. But don’t mistake that as a pro-fossil fuels stance, as the combustion of petroleum compounds produces its own carcinogens like benzene; both issues are of concern to environmental groups.

However, biomass-derived fuels – particularly those in second- and third-generation groups – are more preferable to burning fossil fuels; it’s by no means a perfect solution, and there is nothing in the mainstream that satisfies the notion of genuine ‘clean’ energy, but it pays to be aware of the risks so that these can be improved with scientific advances.

Although one can suggest that wind, hydroelectric and solar energy capture are clean sources of energy in a vacuum, this stance deliberately omits the tonnes of fossil fuels required to produce turbines and solar panels

Regarding e-fuel production, which relies on carbon capture and storage, there are differing concerns surrounding their development. Although it’s true that synthetic fuels can be produced from nothing more than carbon dioxide and water, it’s a tad reductive; the water needs to be electrolysed to produce the hydrogen gas used in the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, which is energy intensive.

‘Green’ hydrogen can be produced with renewable energy sources, which limits scalability for small producers as they need to invest in wind, solar, and hydroelectric power to do so. There are countries, like Canada, which have a surplus of hydroelectric power and thus this can be bought in but, as demand increases for renewable energy, this cannot be relied upon.

The FIA has attempted to ensure that all fuels used provide a genuine reduction in emissions, stating that “the final, blended fuel must achieve a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings, relative to fossil-derived gasoline [...] The GHG savings calculation takes into account any net carbon emissions from land-use change, the energy used in harvesting and transporting the biomass and the production and processing of the advanced sustainable component.”

There will be many who remain cynical about this; in particular, the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) stated in a 2021 study that carbon capture technologies “are not only unnecessary for the rapid transformation required to keep warming under 1.5°C, they delay that transformation, providing the fossil fuel industry with a license to continue polluting”.

An enormous amount of energy is used in the process of creating synthetic fuel

Photo by: Zero

It also cites legitimate issues with the current method of capturing and storing carbon dioxide products; CCS can only mitigate the CO2 production in industry, but do not stop pollution entirely. Direct air capture, on the other hand, is a legitimate solution that pulls CO2 from the air. The same problems with storage persist, but collecting the waste CO2 and using it as a chemical reagent offers some results to fuel manufacturers.

"With carbon capture, you are linking all these decarbonisation technologies together. If you are going to capture CO2, what do you do with it?" Pourkashanian says. "If it's a big company like power generators close to the sea where they can pipe that CO2 and store it underground under the sea, that's OK. But, when you are asking decarbonisation of the industry, so a glass manufacturer, aluminium manufacturer, cement manufacturer, they have to do the decarbonisation using carbon capture.

"So what do they do with CO2? It's extremely expensive to compress it and find a way to the pipeline, if there is a pipeline, and send it over to be stored. One option to these sorts of companies is, of course, have a plan that now that you have captured CO2, rather than have a cost for you to get rid of it, make a value for it, and that will mean you now provide that CO2 to sustainable aviation fuel production, or to producers to make that as a part of that carbon capture strategy.

"There is a breakthrough technology on direct air capture, and then you can use direct air capture to produce even more sustainable aviation fuel. You have to look at all of these as an integrated decarbonisation strategy rather than individually asking 'where do I capture CO2?' Well, that's part of that CO2 capture technology strategy."

In an ideal world, the solution would be to capture CO2 from industry, use it in the production of a fuel, and then use direct air capture to nullify the polluting effects. That's what the growth of air capture technology is attempting to move towards.

In its study, the CIEL recommends greater electrification, but the same problem is raised by mining lithium and cobalt for electric vehicles. It’s another energy-exhaustive process to raid the earth of its natural elements and, if those materials cannot be recycled, are ultimately finite. And, of course, an EV is only as clean as the electricity it uses.

Although one can suggest that wind, hydroelectric and solar energy capture are clean sources of energy in a vacuum, this stance deliberately omits the tonnes of fossil fuels required to produce turbines and solar panels. In that, it becomes a question of what one considers an acceptable level of pollution, given that some amount of it is a certainty. It's the trolley problem: do you stay inactive and let the train run over five people, or are you complicit in killing one by diverting the train's course?

Mining lithium and cobalt for electric vehicles is another energy-exhaustive process

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Sometimes, and it's a horrible cliche, but one needs to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. For some, the idea of “clean” energy will never be clean enough, but it’s impossible to start that road without expending ‘dirty’ energy to start the long and arduous process of decarbonisation.

F1's teams are attempting to be part of the solution, and that's to be commended. And in doing so, many of those involved are trying to take the lead and show other industries that they can start their own process of reducing their environmental impact. For some, these solutions won't go hard enough and, of course, we can all be doing more to cut our carbon emissions and encourage others to do the same.

However, overhauling any business to change its practices is like trying to turn a boat: the bigger the boat, the longer it takes to change course. And that's what sustainability leads, like Ashpitel, are trying to accomplish.

It’s often better to implement a solution and make it perfect, rather than wait for the perfect solution

"As part of a consortium, we're invested in a refinery that will be operational in the coming years and will also then deliver physical volumes of the fuel," Ashpitel says. "For us, our position in kind of developing a strategy for logistics and sustainability across that, it's about how we look at all the different solutions and recognise that actually, on a very global scale our freighting is very small compared to the big players. But we have an ability to demonstrate what solutions are possible, trial them and then show how sport and entertainment can as a sector still travel but do it much more sustainably."

If F1 can introduce fuels to not only power the cars, but its logistics, and ensure that the current carbon level in the environment is no longer impacted, then it has reached its goal of carbon neutrality. It’s often better to implement a solution and make it perfect, rather than wait for the perfect solution. Developing sustainable fuels will expend much in the way of natural resources but, if the loop can be made fully self-sufficient, it has a big future in the automotive industry and beyond.

But it's not going to be perfect - and no 'cleaner' energy solution will be.

F1 has to take proactive steps in going green rather than wait for the perfect solution to come along

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images