The rarified atmosphere of a concert of Bach cantatas in one of the finest concert halls in the world would seem to be the height of beauty, elegance, and art - and surely such an event could be considered to do very little harm anywhere. Yet the average classical music concert can be responsible for some 50 tons of carbon emissions.
Well, he enlisted the help of the Climate Neutral Group - an organisation that determined the figure of the CO2 emissions of such a concert, calculating the distance traveled by the audience and the performers and adding in the factors of electricity and other power supplies used, and they came up with a figure of just over 51 tons. Then they put a monetary equivalent to that figure (600 euros). Mr Luiten has decided to take that amount from the ticket sales and donate it to a biogas project in Bangladesh.
CO2
The concert was performed by the Belgian Baroque orchestra La Petite Bande on 1st February to a nearly full Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Mr Luiten is giving one additional euro per ticket sold to the project. "I could have donated the money to a project planting trees" he says, indicating an option by many companies seeking to balance out their own contribution to carbon emissions, "but the World Wildlife Fund says that to cancel out Holland's total CO2 emissions, there would have to be trees planted over a
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It's assumed that most Amsterdammers came to the concert by bike - the indispensable Dutch mode of transport. For those from out of town, the Concertgebouw has long had a scheme in place whereby a ticket to a concert gets you a free ride on the local tram system. Fred Luiten hopes that more concerts around the world will be organised on a similar model to enable us all to listen to beautiful music with an easy heart.
Tags: Bach, carbon neutral, classical music, CO2 emissions, Concertgebouw, Fred Luiten, La Petite Bande