The motorsport bringing the fight against climate change closer to home

Extreme E’s Catie Munnings used to see climate change as a phenomenon affecting far-flung locales. Now she – and the electric off-road racing series – are discovering it hits a lot closer to home.

Next month’s inaugural season finale, originally set for Ushuaia, Argentina has relocated to Dorset’s Bovington military base and been renamed the Jurassic X Prix.

Sure, the home of the Tank Museum doesn’t sound quite as exotic as the Tierra del Fuego city boasting a sign marking the ‘end of the world’, as harsh as the desert in the Saudi Arabian season opener, or as obvious a metaphor as Greenland’s melting Russell Glacier.

But the replacement venue is perhaps Extreme E’s most authentic realisation of its awareness-raising mission: rather than reaffirming climate change as the destroyer of exotic travel destinations, it serves as a provocation to Britons to consider their own part in the crisis.

“It is a surprise to be racing in England,” admitted Kent-born Munnings, who extended her Extreme E contract with the Andretti United team in August. This week, she’ll be promoting electric vehicles at Cop26.

“When I thought of Extreme E I thought of, as it says on the tin, travelling to some of the most remote locations that have had effects from climate change.

“I’d probably been quite ignorant in my past, and seen it as kind of problem that’s happening in wildfires in Australia, or rising sea levels in other parts of the world, and not necessarily something that’s on our doorstep.

“But when we travel, it’s made me realise how connected everything is, and how we can’t just think of fighting the issue in one place, and actually bringing it back and bringing it home to the UK, and looking at our problems here has kind of given me a new sense of responsibility for the part we play in our own communities as well.

“It’s not just a problem that’s happening in exotic locations.”

In August, the British Army announced it had begun to test new hybrid technology on its vehicles after following a £7 million investment from the Ministry of Defence — a step, it believes, that could have both tactical advantages and contribute to the government’s target of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050.

And last month, Chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged £1million in government support to a race planned for Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in Extreme E’s second season.

Extreme E bills itself as “the first sport built out of concern for the climate crisis” and hopes to “use electric racing to highlight remote environments under threat of climate change issues.”

The series uses a refurbished former Royal Mail vessel, the St Helena, as floating paddock to reduce air travel, and has committed to a net-zero carbon footprint by the end of the season.

The Jurassic X Prix, said Extreme E founder Alejandro Agag, is “a poignant shift in our mission to race in remote, far-away places to highlight the effects of climate change, as more increasingly, the issues we talk about are literally happening in our backyard.”

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Drivers and crews participate in “legacy programmes”, from reforestation to nature conservation and in partnership with NGOs and charities, which continue once St Helena sails to the next race, and will still be part of the plans for the first X Prix on British soil.

Munnings partners Timmy Hansen on Andretti United, one of the series’ nine teams—all of which must have one male and one female driver—who sit in third place heading into the finale at Bovington.

McLaren has already pledged to enter a team for next season, unveiling Emma Gilmour as its first-ever female driver at Cop26 last week.

Munnings has especially appreciated the opportunity to work with and learn from Extreme E’s team of scientific advisors, led by Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge. She has also become, as a result, a voracious reader on climate change.

“I’ve actually been shocked that we’re not speaking about it more,” stressed the former CBeebies presenter, who grew up on a farm just a three-hour drive away from the finale site.

“I don’t think that the facts are there for people unless you’re looking for it. I left school in 2016 so it’s relatively recently when you think of it.

“I didn’t learn nearly enough. And I think that sense of urgency, I never thought it would be changes we’d see in our lifetime.

“[Extreme E] has sped up my process of learning. If we could have some kind of compulsory learning for everyone, not just at school level, but just to really get the facts out there.

“I think people would be quite shocked, as I have been.”