Next year, Formula 1 (F1) will pull into the pits for one of its most ambitious overhauls yet – trading fossil fuel for a 100-per-cent sustainable blend. It’s part of a broader effort to meet new environmental rules and to prove the sport can, in F1’s words, “keep us driving without building new cars.”
But not everyone’s convinced. With fuel from races making up less than one per cent of the sport’s total carbon footprint, experts say F1 has far bigger environmental challenges to tackle. So, what are they and how can they be solved?
Switching gears
In 2020, F1’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), set a deadline for race cars’ engines to run on 100-per-cent sustainable fuels from 2026 and for the sport to be carbon neutral by 2030.
The transition began in 2023 and 2024, when Formula 2 and Formula 3 (F1’s feeder racing series) started using 55-per-cent ‘sustainable bio-sourced fuel’, before switching to 100-per-cent ‘advanced sustainable fuel’ in 2025.
Now, F1 has developed its own ‘sustainable’ fuel for 2026. This fuel has been designed specifically for the hybrid engines in today’s F1 cars, which rely on both an internal combustion engine (ICE) and two electric motor-generators.
F1 says the new fuel won’t add to the overall amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Instead, the carbon used in the new fuel will be extracted from existing sources – including household waste and non-food biomass – or captured as carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.
This will then be used to make a synthetic fuel – a man-made fuel designed to do the same job as the fossil fuel-derived petrol used currently. In the long term, the FIA says that F1, 2 and 3 will all eventually adopt this “fully synthetic hybrid fuel”.
But it won’t just be for race cars. F1 describes the new fuel as ‘drop in’, meaning it’ll work not only with existing combustion engines but also fuel distribution networks. In other words, the fuel that will be powering F1 cars in 2026, is the same one that you could soon be pumping into your car at your local petrol station.
Truly sustainable?
The widespread use of the word “sustainable” has led experts to scrutinise the claims being made by F1, however.
Dr Paula Pérez-López specialises in environmental and social sustainability of products at the MINES ParisTech Centre for Observation, Impacts, Energy (O.I.E).
She explains that for a product to fulfil the definition of “sustainable”, it must meet specific environmental, social and economic criteria and consider these aspects in every part of its supply chain.
“The term ‘sustainable’ is definitely not the same as ‘low-carbon’. A product or process may be low-carbon while having high emissions of other pollutants, thus being ‘unsustainable’.”
The FIA appointed the Zemo Partnership, a UK-based non-profit, to develop the Sustainable Racing Fuel Assurance Scheme (SRFAS). This is a third-party scheme to certify the use of sustainable racing fuel, ensuring it meets the FIA’s regulatory standards.
This requires the fuel to "be made from a minimum of 99-per-cent advanced sustainable components (ASC) certified to have been derived from a renewable source of non-biological origin (RFNBO), municipal waste, or non-food biomass."
In layman's terms, this means the new fuel must be either synthetic, made from waste products, or derived from materials not intended for human or animal consumption, such as specially developed algae.
The new fuel must also meet qualities put forward by EU Renewable Energy Directive III (RED III) and the EU Delegated Act.
Fraser Browning, founder of Kurb Carbon, a company that advises businesses on how to minimise their climate impact, says that, if managed responsibly, the new fuel will deliver a genuine decarbonisation initiative.
“The bigger question is around F1’s overall impact,” he says. “Why has F1 decided to take this route into synthetic fuels? Because it’s a fundamental part of its sustainability journey? Or is it just a box-ticking exercise?”
Browning points out that innovation in motorsports has previously led to great leaps forward in sustainable motoring as a whole. In 2020, for example, Mercedes announced that its hybrid technology for F1 cars would be adapted into its road cars. Earlier this year, the German car maker also unveiled a new battery that could extend the range of its electric road cars by 25 per cent.
“I believe that we wouldn’t have hybrid vehicles in the form and as quickly as we do today if it hadn't been for input from sporting innovation,” he says. “But it has to be done in a transparent and responsible way.”
Cutting carbon
Beyond the switch to synthetic fuels, F1 has also made efforts to reduce its carbon emissions in other areas. Travel and logistics make up two-thirds of F1’s carbon footprint, with teams, heavy mechanical kit and fans travelling vast distances between races each year.
According to F1’s latest Impact Report, in 2024, changes were made to the F1 calendar to reduce the freight distance between events. For example, the Japanese Grand Prix was rearranged to take place in April, grouping it with other Asia-Pacific races.
F1 also expanded the use of biofuel in the trucks used to transport its freight across Europe. Changes like these led to a nine-per-cent reduction in carbon emissions in the logistics side of F1.
By the end of 2024, total carbon emissions were reduced by 26 per cent compared to the 2018 baseline, but F1 admits that it has “major milestones to achieve, including further investment in alternative fuels across our operations and updating our logistics network to maximise efficiency.”
Synthetic fuels vs electric vehicles
What about the claims that F1’s new synthetic fuel will be a drop-in, which could be used for everyday driving in our current cars? Could it offer a more sustainable alternative than electric vehicles (EVs)?
Critics say that the manufacturing of synthetic fuels for internal combustion engines (ICE) is energy-intensive and expensive, potentially requiring five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-powered electric vehicle.
Currently, 96 per cent of hydrogen used to make these fuels in the EU is produced from natural gas, a process that emits considerable amounts of CO₂. Currently, renewable hydrogen is also more expensive than fossil-based hydrogen.
“Obtaining pure, concentrated CO₂ is a major challenge,” says Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira, professor at the State University of Campinas, in São Paulo, Brazil and co-author of a study in Brazil that compared biofuels with pure electric vehicles.
“There is a technology called Direct Air Capture that can achieve this, but to reach a concentration of 100 per cent requires enormous energy consumption. Estimated costs range from $500–$1,200 (approx £375–£895) per tonne, making e-fuel at least 4–8 times more expensive than driving an electric car.”
Browning agrees that EVs provide a better low-carbon option in the long run. “Their maintenance and in-use emissions are far lower,” he says.
“Synthetic fuels, when processed responsibly, may provide a lower impact overall, but I’m yet to see a comprehensive life cycle assessment across multiple sustainability metrics that provides a detailed answer to this dilemma.”
In other words, until every part of the system that produces a synthetic fuel can be reliably proven to have a positive impact on the environment, the jury’s still out on how much good they’ll actually achieve.
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