Every little bit of help to combat our ongoing climate crisis helps and now a stack of our favourite touring Australian musicians have banded together to start a company that will allow artists to invest in solar farms.
An idea dreamed up by Cloud Control's Heidi Lenffer, acts like Vance Joy, Peking Duk, Midnight Oil, Regurgitator and Cub Sport will be launching a solar investment initiative called FEAT (Future Energy Artists) that will help finance new and existing solar farms in Australia.
Basically, artists will be able to invest a lump sum or a percentage of their touring income into FEAT to fund new farms being built - the first being Brigalow Solar Farm in Queensland, which will be big enough (35 megawatts) to power 11,300 homes for 30 years.
It all started when Heidi realised two weeks of touring with Cloud Control created 28 tonnes of carbon emissions, so she gathered some of her mates in the music world to give back to the earth.
"The fact is that this was just one small tour in an album cycle which also took us to the U.S. three times… then you think about multiplying this out with a $64-billion dollar industry worldwide and you’ve got a serious problem," Heidi explains.
"Touring is easily the biggest source of income for artists, so when I understood how something as important as live music could be creating so much damage at this critical time in human history, I knew we could do so much better. I also knew that a progressive community like the music industry would have the guts and imagination to embrace change.”
Other artists involved include Jack River, Big Scary, Little May, Mansionair, Set Mo, The Rubens, The Jezabels, Urthboy, Washington, Vallis Alips and more, including huge music festival promoters like Unified and Laneway Festival.
