Today Vodafone Business announced the next phase of its partnership with Extreme E, the pioneering motor racing series with sustainability at its core. Extending beyond racing to support the series’ local sustainability projects, Vodafone Business is launching a new IoT ultra-early forest fire detection system in a region of Sardinia hardest-hit during the wildfires of summer 2021.

Sardinia is the location for Extreme E’s next double-header racing event taking place on 6-7^th and 9-10^th July. Last year, forest fires devastated forests in Sardinia and elsewhere in the Mediterranean region. The fires blazed through 20,000 hectares of land, displaced over 1,000 people and killed around 30 million bees. Wildfires such as these are responsible for 20% of total global CO2 emissions and cost $5bn to fight.

Away from the race track, the Extreme E team are embarking upon a legacy sustainability project to restore the historic olive groves lost to wildfires. Together, Vodafone Business and Extreme E will run a fire prevention campaign within the local communities in the area of Montiferru. As part of this project, Vodafone Business is deploying long-life Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) sensors to quickly detect any fire and promptly send an alert to the authorities.

The low-cost IoT gas sensors operate without the need for cellular coverage and will be installed in trees to detect the smouldering phase, before the fire takes hold, which will preserve forest footprint by shortening reaction times in the ‘golden hour’. Using a Mesh Gateway to connect to a cloud-based alert centre means this is a much faster-acting solution to the problem of wildfire detection than using cameras or satellites.

Many of Vodafone’s solutions have sustainability and inclusivity at their core, and through its IoT solutions Vodafone Business is helping sustainability efforts, including agriculture, forestation and decarbonisation of energy grids. This partnership will have many benefits for the local area and the environment, including:

• Reduced cost of firefighting
• Reduced impact to economy
• Saved lives and wildlife species
• Reduced insurance costs

The exciting partnership includes full involvement in the purpose-driven elements of the series, with special prominence on Extreme E’s Legacy Programmes and the Science Laboratory on board the St Helena.

With sustainability at the heart of everything Extreme E does, the series will also be using Vodafone’s IoT solutions to monitor power usage to further minimise its carbon footprint.

Extreme E’s five-race global voyage aims to pave the way to a lower carbon future through the promotion of electric vehicles; draw attention to the impacts of climate change and the solutions we can all be part of; and seeks to accelerate gender equality in motorsport.

The Island X Prix, co-organised by the Automobile Club d’Italia and Regione Sardegna, is just days away, and the scene is set for double the on-track action and double the impact in the fight to tackle climate change.