World Cup ‘carbon neutral’ – maybe

FIFA’s green goals assessed

Even the World Cup doesn’t last forever - though its legacy could. Keen to score a string of environmental wins in Germany, rather than impose penalties all over the park, FIFA decided back in 2002 [see GF40, ‘Ball with no footprint?’] to bring on Freiburg’s renowned Öko-Institut to work up a Green Goal plan.

The result? The tournament made a pretty impressive stab at converting opportunities into achievements across the spectrum from smart travel, power generation and water use, to waste minimisation, the use of recycled concrete for construction, and the purchase of second-hand seating…

High points include: Getting there - match tickets functioning as one-day travel cards on all local public transport, and free nationwide rail travel for 6,000 journalists. Greening the electrics - with the three biggest solar power facilities in the world of football kicking in at the Kaiserslautern, Dortmund and Nuremberg stadiums, and all of the 13 million kWh grid power requirement supplied as ‘clean electricity’ by EnBW, albeit from large-scale hydro generation. Sparing the water - Berlin can now boast the biggest stadium rainwater collection cistern in Europe; Nuremberg has cut its use of drinking-quality water in half; and across all 12 stadiums it’s standard to find waterless urinals, natural drainage systems, and unsealed car parks that don’t impede ground water replenishment. Watching the waste - drinks in the stadiums served in reusable containers (a first for any World Cup or Olympic Games), and sorting of the refuse left behind by spectators, to maximise recycling.

Inescapably, the World Cup (like any major sporting event) makes for a big increase in carbon dioxide emissions - largely because of the massive amount of travel it entails. The Öko-Institut started with a 100,000-tonne estimated overall CO2 hit on climate change. Deducting what could be achieved by all this ecological stadium management, it reckoned that the tournament could be made ‘carbon neutral’ by funding carbon offset projects to the tune of 30,000 tonnes of CO2.

And, back in March this year, it was announced that €1.2 billion had been spent on doing just that. Some of the direct beneficiaries may even be blessedly unaffected by the football frenzy - they include, for example, women in the villages of Tamil Nadu in southern India who’re involved in a project to spread the use of biogas-fuelled cooking stoves. Austria’s keen to pick up every possible trick before hosting Euro 2008 - and it’s all in the learning pack for London’s 2012 Olympics too. - Roger East

7 July 2006