It’s no wonder Coldplay look to the skies on their latest effort, because it seems like they’ve long since conquered the earth, especially when they go on tour. This was demonstrated on their previous tour, A Head Full of Dreams, which in 2016 took them to tour 31 countries on four continents in just over a year and a half, during which they performed in front of 5.4 million people and raised 524 million dollars, a figure only surpassed at that time by U2 and the Rolling Stones, with 736 and 558 million respectively.
Since then, other musicians have exceeded this figure, such as Elton John and his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, but that is not the goal that Coldplay seem to aspire to, who in the past years without a tour (including a pandemic) have focused their efforts on reduce pollution caused during travel and performances. It is for this reason that they decided to cancel the presentation concerts of their previous album, Everyday life, concerned about the climate impact. “We are going to take some time to see how our tour can be beneficial,” said Chris Martin, leader of the formation.
Time has passed and it seems that Coldplay have kept their word. His latest and pharaonic tour, Music of the Spheres Tour, has been raised from postulates that seek to protect the environment and experiment with solutions to reduce the ecological footprint of these cities with wheels that are the stages of the big bands, moved by dozens of of trucks and mobilizing hundreds of people in each city.
As the British quartet explains on the tour’s website, their goal is to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% compared to the previous tour, a challenge that they have wanted to symbolize from the beginning by opening in Costa Rica, to value that 98% of the energy produced by the Central American country comes from renewable sources.
When traveling around Europe and the United States, the group preferably uses recycled diesel and biofuel for trucks, a measure that, according to the group, will reduce CO2 emissions by between 75% and 95%. When traveling by plane, they prioritize commercial flights, and if they need to charter a charter, it uses fuel made from recycled materials.
The British quartet wants to extend this savings to the fans themselves, starting with the commitment to plant a tree for every ticket sold during the tour. In addition, it has developed an app that informs concert attendees of the carbon footprint generated by the different means of transport available to them to go to the venue of the performance.
The issue of private travel becomes more important on this tour, as Coldplay have chosen to concentrate a large part of the Music of the Spheres Tour dates in specific cities. This is what they have done with the four concerts that they will give in Barcelona (24, 25, 27 and 28 May), the only Spanish stop, becoming the first band to manage to fill the Coliseum on Montjuïc mountain for four nights. The same number of concerts, four, will be given in Paris, Brussels, Manchester, Amsterdam or Santiago de Chile, while in London and São Paulo they have already carried out six performances in each city. Although the crown of this tour goes to Buenos Aires, the city where Coldplay performed ten times at the River Plate stadium, breaking the record for consecutive concerts at the Buenos Aires coliseum, which until now had Roger Waters with nine performances.
The other part of the energy saving measures focuses on the concert itself, starting with the stages, built with lightweight materials and recycled steel, which can be reused after the performances are over. In addition, next to the stage, solar panels are installed to supply energy to the concerts, as well as kinetic carpets that transform the movement of people into energy when they pass over them in the venue.
With the same objective, around fifteen bicycles are available connected to a dynamo that will power the lights of the show, replaced for the occasion by low-consumption LED models, which together with ultra-efficient laser and sound equipment reduce consumption by 50% energy in this section compared to the previous tour. And to store this energy, reused batteries from BMW cars are used.
The improvements also affect two omnipresent elements in the concerts of the British band: the confetti, which will be biodegradable, and the Xylobands, the luminous bracelets that have become part of the show, which on this tour will be collected at the end of the concert to be reused in the following boluses after sterilization. Two measures that are added to the thirty that are planned for Coldplay’s concerts to help conserve the planet and not see us forced to emigrate to other stars in the galaxy, where the music of the spheres comes from.