Designing A Low(er) Carbon World Cup
We don’t want to be a bore but the FIFA World Cup 2022 has a carbon footprint WAY larger than necessary.
Mike Berners-Lee (author of How Bad Are Bananas), recently said, "It looks like this World Cup will be the highest carbon event of any kind, apart from a war, that humans have ever staged".
It’s also incredibly expensive (compared to previous World Cups) and less accessible for fans.
To our mind, the World Cup has 3 main aims:
To pit the world’s football teams against each other to find out which is best
To create entertainment for fans
To unite people through sport
Holding the competition in Qatar, doesn’t make any of these goals more achievable.
In fact, it has significant detrimental effects in terms of creating pollution that the world is trying to rid itself of, not to mention the loss of many migrant worker lives that has been widely reported. It also creates significant financial and geographical barriers for football fans wanting to enjoy the matches.
So what would we suggest?
The biggest and most effective change would be not to have a host country at all, but to organise the matches at the largest stadium in one of the playing team’s countries.
Why?
Because travel makes up such a huge proportion of the total carbon footprint (over 50% according to FIFA but probably heading more towards 70% according to our estimates).
Source: FIFA greenhouse gas accounting report https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/283d8622accb9efe/original/ocv9xna0lkvdshw30idr-pdf.pdf
(‘Other’ includes printed materials, merchandise, food & drink, waste and waste water etc)
Take just spectator travel for the England vs Wales game in Doha, Qatar on 29th November in a stadium with a 45,000 person capacity. If this match took place in either London or Cardiff (which, by the way, have stadiums with double that capacity) the carbon emissions would be a tiny in comparison.
Here are our sums:
A London - Doha return flight = 1550 kgs of CO2e per person
VS
Train travel between London & Cardiff = 8 kgs of CO2e per person
And this is what it means:
For this one match the actual visitor emissions could be in the region of a whopping: 70,000,000 kgs of CO2e!
Under our plan, the emissions would be around: 800,000 kgs of CO2e.
This represents a reduction of nearly 99% whilst doubling the number of fans.
Note: the 99% reduction applies to this match. Australia vs Canada would have a larger footprint, but still WAY lower than if the match was held in Qatar.
It probably didn’t escape your notice that the next largest percentage share of emissions is created by combining the construction of temporary and new stadiums. Under our plan, this simply wouldn’t be necessary saving a cool 817.22 tonnes of CO2e (and the aforementioned workers lives too).
And the carbon savings don’t stop there. There would be less emissions associated with accommodation because one team’s fans would be closer to home.
Holding the World Cup in a devolved way like this would be fairer too, as it would spread the wealth generated between the participating countries. Going back to the 3 aims of the World Cup (as we see them), our model would enable these better than the current one simply through better engagement of fans.
So FIFA, what say you? How about adopting our model, democratising access to the games, sharing the benefits and dramatically cutting the carbon cost?
If your business runs sporting events and you’d like to measure the impact and/or work with us to reduce your carbon emissions, get in touch.
Blog cover image of World Cup trophy courtesy of Fauzen Saari, Unsplash.
