the promise of “carbon neutrality” of the World Cup is not credible

The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be the first edition of the famous planetary tournament not to release a single gram of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to FIFA and the Qatari organizing committee. The two organizations ensure that the efforts made in recent years have made it possible to fully offset the emissions linked to the event by financing projects linked to renewable energies elsewhere, for a result “carbon neutral”.

But carbon neutrality is a theoretical concept that is difficult to implement and verify. This means both correctly estimating the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere to be “offset” and funding enough projects to avoid other emissions elsewhere on the planet, ensuring that they would not have seen the light of day without this funding (without which nothing is “compensated” at all).

In fact, the promise of carbon neutrality does not stand up to close examination of the actions taken by the organizers and the methodology used to calculate the emissions linked to the World Cup.

Emissions clearly underestimated by FIFA

In June 2021, the International Football Federation (FIFA) published a report on greenhouse gas emissions related to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Written by South Pole, a specialist firm based in Zurich, a few kilometers from the federation’s headquarters, it offers a complete inventory of emissions calculated as part of the GHG-Protocola methodology commonly used for this kind of exercise, developed in 1998. In total, the report estimates that the tournament should release the equivalent of 3.63 million tons of CO₂, ie the equivalent of the annual emissions of Montenegro (610,000 inhabitants), or the average monthly emissions of Denmark (5.87 million inhabitants). These emissions are divided into several categories:

1. direct emissions from the personnel and equipment of the organizers;
2. indirect emissions due to the production of energy consumed by the organisers;
3. indirect emissions generated by visitors, subcontractors or the production of products purchased by the organisers.

In this calculation, direct emissions (category 1) are minimal and account for only 1% of total emissions, or 35,100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e). Indirect emissions related to the consumption of electricity and fuel directly attributable to the twenty-nine days of competition are almost as low (37,200 tonnes CO₂e) because they are strictly limited to the activities of staff and volunteers of FIFA and the Qatari Organizing Committee. The bulk of greenhouse gas emissions are in the third category (98%), that of indirect emissions, including the spectators – 1.2 million – expected in Qatar and the construction of World Cup infrastructure (3 .56 million tonnes CO₂e).

But several methodological elements suggest that these results are rather conservative and tend to underestimate the real emissions attributable to the event, according to a report published at the end of May 2022 by Carbon Market Watchan NGO specializing in carbon markets and public climate policies, founded in 2009 and based in Austria.

Seven have been built and one renovated from top to bottom to accommodate all 64 matches

One of the first questionable elements concerns the carbon footprint of the stadiums planned for the competition. Seven were built and one renovated from top to bottom to accommodate all 64 matches, which would have emitted 644,000 tonnes of CO₂according to the FIFA report, including 438,000 tonnes for the temporary Stade 974 alone – which would imply that the construction/renovation of the other seven stadiums would have emitted half as much CO₂ than that of the tournament’s only removable stadium. This is explained by a choice of methodology which consists in distributing the emissions generated by construction over the total lifetime of the buildings. However, if this choice is most of the time classic and adapted, it allows FIFA to allocate to the 2022 World Cup only the emissions corresponding to seventy days of the supposed lifespan of the stadium. Knowing that FIFA has, in the past, estimated such a lifespan at sixty years, this method of calculation makes it possible to attribute to the competition only 0.32% of the actual emissions due to their construction.

However, these brand new stadiums, built a few tens of kilometers from each other in an agglomeration which hardly hosts any sports competition, are clearly oversized and too numerous to be used by the local public alone. Like all previous organizers, these have guaranteed that the stadiums will continue to serve. But all the past examples (South Korea and Japan in 2002, South Africa in 2010, Russia in 2018) show that these infrastructures, too expensive to maintain in the absence of tenant clubs and therefore of a regular public, are largely abandoned, even in football countries like Brazil.

Based on other figures in separate reports, Carbon Market Watch estimates that the result of the construction of the six new permanent stadiums is at least 1.62 million tonnes of CO₂, but could be more important. Combined with the removable stage, the balance sheet of the seven new enclosures would ultimately amount to more than 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

These CO emissions₂ are very complicated to calculate independently

Likewise, the report published by FIFA does not include the emissions generated by the construction of all the infrastructure that would not have been created if the country did not have to organize one of the most important sporting events in the world on his territory. These emissions are very complicated to calculate independently as it is difficult to estimate the number of transport, accommodation and office infrastructures that can reasonably be attributed to the organization of this 2022 World Cup. But it is clear enough that the construction boom experienced by this small gas emirate over the last decade is partly linked to the awarding of the tournament obtained on December 2, 2010.

This report also does not include the emissions that will be generated by the 160 daily flights between Doha and neighboring countries (mainly the United Arab Emirates) which will host a good part of the 1.2 million spectators expected for the event. The hotel capacities of the emirate do not allow it to accommodate all the spectators and guests, which will force some of them to have a two-hour round trip flight from Dubai, or other neighboring cities, to get to at the stadium. In the first two weeks of the tournament alone, those which see the most spectators flock during the group stages, these “air shuttles” will emit between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes of CO₂according to a calculation made by The world.

Funding to “compensate” for broadcasts to absent subscribers

Achieving carbon neutrality means “offsetting” greenhouse gas emissions by financing the “removal” of other equivalent emissions, so that the balance of the two is zero. To this end, the organizers of the 2022 World Cup have promised to buy “carbon credits” in order to offset the 3.63 million tonnes of CO₂ which they believe should be issued. Of the 3.6 million carbon credits that will have to be purchased, half should be purchased from a credit-issuing organization created from scratch by FIFA and the Qatari organizing committee, the Global Carbon Council (GCC). A method that allows organizers and their partners in the Gulf countries to define their own standards, without going through recognized certifying bodies on the carbon markets such as Verified Carbon Standard or Gold Standard.

Three weeks before its opening, we are therefore still very far from the objective of 1.8 million carbon credits to be issued by the GCC.

At the time of writing, the GCC has only approved carbon credits for three projects: a wind farm and a hydroelectric plant in Turkey, as well as another wind farm in Serbia, which only issued 176,918 carbon credits. Twelve years after the World Cup was awarded and three weeks before its opening, we are therefore still very far from the objective of 1.8 million carbon credits to be issued by the GCC, and even further from the 3.6 million required. to “cover” the inventory of World Cup emissions, which are already underestimated.

And even if the GCC managed to issue as many carbon credits within a few years, it is unlikely that they would effectively offset the emissions linked to the World Cup, as it is difficult to prove that the projects financed actually serve to reduce emissions. Because for project financing to have a real impact on the climate, it must be additional: it must be proven that these projects would not have been possible without this financing.

However, the renewable energy financing projects that Qatari organizers mainly target are typically projects that are difficult to add to the project, notes Gilles Dufrasne, the main author of the Carbon Market Watch report. “Given the increasing financial profitability of renewable energies around the world, (…) these projects are likely to be carried out, whether or not they allow the sale of carbon credits. (…) Purchasing these credits does not generate additional emission reductions”since their financing would be ” Anyway “.