In the first of an exclusive two-part interview with Motorsport Week, FIA Formula E’s Vice President of Sustainability, Julia Palle, talks about her role in detail, as well as sharing the achievements and goals that the sport is aiming to reach next.
Julia Palle is a name that is likely to be familiar to fans of Formula E. Whenever the sport achieves something new and groundbreaking, Palle is often on hand to talk about it, and why not? Her hard work behind the scenes has helped Formula E set new benchmarks both on and off the track, but perhaps most will not understand what goes into her role.
“My role is to make the purpose and the mission that the Championship has given itself a reality, which is to accelerate sustainable human progress, and translate that into a strategy that gets implemented,” she says.
“So bringing to life the higher purpose of the business and creating an environmental Net Zero strategy, creating a social impact strategy, creating what we call “value through values”, which is how we activate sustainability with our teams, partners and suppliers, and ultimately making sure that we are always at the forefront of sustainability, leadership and innovation, like how the GEN3 car was the first-ever racing car designed with sustainability KPIs and circular economy principles, or simply the fact that we are coming for the second year in a row, topping the ESG global sport ranking.”
The message that Formula E is spreading is that racing can be exciting without being harmful to the planet. A number of the manufacturers in FE have taken steps in production of electric road vehicles, with names like Jaguar and Maserati pledging to become all-electric by the end of this decade. Palle says that the work from the teams has enabled the road car side of those companies to make technological advances, and the interest in such advances reaches beyond the track and into the sponsors that back the Championship.
“The teams and the partners that join us will join us for the sustainability element, and then sustainability materialises more in the technological side.
“Whereas for the partners, they want to work with us and innovate with us on some sustainability solutions that they develop at the scale of the Championship, and then they basically use and replicate on the scope that they have, which are big, multinational companies and so on.
“To give you an example, Nissan joined us at the very start of the Formula E journey and their Nissan Leaf road car’s battery capacity through their years of involvement has increased by over 180 percent, and that’s obviously through all the technological research and improvement that has been done in the garages and they’ve been transferring that into the everyday passenger cars like you and I are driving.
“And then if we take a different example, Allianz, our insurance partner that is a very fan-facing brand name and that is sponsoring our fan village, has been working with us for many seasons now on all topics surrounding plastic pollution.
“It has been a priority for them at group level, and so they decided to use the partnership with Formula E to create the activation around the hydrogen stations, which means its water fountains, reusable cups or vessels in general where we were able to cut over half-a-million plastic bottle from landfills or the oceans just through this partnership.
“Allianz also has a strong point to prove to showcase and elevate what they are capable of doing with other properties and in-front of their clients.”
Formula E is now four rounds into Season 10, and many targets are on the agenda. Under Palle’s direction and help, the crosshairs are aimed at maintaining the environmental strategy and increasing its work with the FIA’s Girls on Track scheme.
“Season 10 is a very important season for us – there are a few new directions and angles as we have a new CEO [Jeff Dodds] that has brought his own strategic direction in the business, which is great.
“We are continuing everything in line with our Net Zero carbon strategy, especially with the commitment to remain under the threshold of our science-based targets, which in a sense means by 2030, we need to have deceased CO2 emissions relating to the entire Championship by 50 percent.
“That’s logistics, travelling the cars around the world, delivering the events, powering cars and the events, the food served at our events, spectators travelling, everything included.
“And we are on track for the third year in a row, which is amazing because it’s really challenging to be on an exponential trajectory in terms of growth while decreasing trajectory in terms of CO2 reduction.
“On the social side, we have very much a continuation in terms of the focus that we have on children – we are creating new programs to support child education and empowerment.
“We have our partnership with UNICEF and we are giving a bigger focus on all the programs related to gender and female empowerment.
“Girls on Track is our flagship program to support and create interest for young girls to understand that motorsport is a welcoming environment for them should they want to work in motorsport or simply be interested in STEM topics, and then there’s an element where they try driving electric karts with us.
“It’s something that we’ve decided to expand and we will have Girls on Track at every event this season and that’s going to be a contribution, so basically we are doubling the impact of girls that will be exposed and go through the program with us and obviously that’s how you create the grassroots pool of young and talented females to go up the ladder of motorsport, potentially as a driver, potentially, as a team principal, as a chief engineer, chief mechanic and so on.
“Showing girls that they can be whoever they want based on their skill set in motorsport and that they are more than welcome, showing that there are some role models, and then the continuation of all the things that we’ve been doing already in terms of leadership, aligning to the highest standards.
“One of our big objectives this year is to achieve B Corp certification – a certification that has been created in the US and really testifies the best level of environmental, social and also governance levels in the business and we hope that is going to be something that is a great testament to our ongoing commitment.
“As I mentioned, we are continually working to remain at the top of the ESG ranking for sustainability which is called Global Sustainability Benchmark is Sport – we’ve topped the ranking twice in a row and we’ve topped the ranking for motorsport three years in a row.
“That’s very important, not just for saying that we are the best but showcasing that it’s actually feasible for just a young sport – ten years old – that has decided to take sustainability at its heart, that sustainability and sport within the business powerfully coexist and they reinforce each other.
“You will have seen on our social media channels, the video with Reem [Al Aboud] in our BETA car [setting a new 0-60 speed benchmark] – that’s one of the best examples of sustainability and sport coming together and reinforcing each other, because it’s clearly a piece that is driven by the social impact element, but we’ve used the thrill of the sport to turn it into something where fans will project themselves, will be excited by the innovation of the car, and the technology used by Google AI.
“Lastly, a continual work with the teams, and the partners to achieve sustainability in their own narratives and so on.
“We have created a conferencing platform that is called “Change.Accelerated.Live” that we’re continually growing.
“The next event is going to be in Tokyo, which we are very excited about.
“We will have our teams and our partners coming together in a thought leadership format to talk about what is the future of net zero societies and creating diversity, equality and inclusion in sport or in technical industries and making sure that we can live a long, lasting legacy.”
