FIFA’s climate own goal: Swiss advertising regulator rules 2022 World Cup not “carbon neutral”
FIFA’s climate own goal: Swiss advertising regulator rules 2022 World Cup not “carbon neutral”
All carbon credits are junk
“Thank you for the opportunity to share our plans to tackle climate change,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said on 3 November 2021, in a video made for COP26, held in Glasgow.
Before going any further, it’s worth noting that as the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, the Qatar World Cup was, “Insane. Absurd. Ridiculous. Corrupt. Evil.” The infrastructure was built by migrant labour who are modern day slaves: no-rights; low wages; and unable to leave. More than 6,500 migrant labourers died in Qatar in the 10 years after it won the bid to host the World Cup.
The World Cup should not have been held in Qatar.
But going back to Infantino’s announcement about FIFA’s so-called “plans to tackle climate change”. In November 2021, Infantino told us that,
“Earlier this year, we published the carbon footprint of the FIFA World Cup 2022 and together with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy in Qatar reconfirmed our joint pledge to make this next major tournament fully carbon neutral.”
Last week, the Swiss Fairness Commission (SLK), Switzerland’s advertising regulator, upheld complaints against FIFA’s claims that the World Cup was “carbon neutral”:
The SLK has advised FIFA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims in the future. Particularly the claim that the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar was climate- or carbon-neutral. At the time of communication, claims of this nature could only be made if the body could – using generally accepted methods – fully substantiate the calculation of all CO₂ emissions caused due to the tournament and provide proof that these CO₂ emissions have been fully offset.
The complaint was filed in November 2022 by the Climate Defence Association (Avocats.e.s pour le Climat) on behalf of Alliance Climatique (Switzerland) and four civil society organisations: Carbon Market Watch (Belgium), Notre Affaire à tous (France), New Weather Institute (UK), as well as Fossil Free Football and Reclame Fossielvrij (Netherlands).
“Misleading”
In a statement, Carbon Market Watch’s Gilles Dufrasne said,
“The decision of the Swiss Fairness Commission confirms the findings of our research and reinforces what we have been saying for the past year: FIFA’s messaging is misleading for the hundreds of millions of fans around the world who were pushed to believe that their favourite tournament has no impact on the climate. It’s high time for this absurd greenwashing to end.”
In May 2022, Carbon Market Watch published a report that found that the calculations used to make the World Cup appear carbon neutral ignored major sources of emissions. According to the calculations, prepared by carbon consulting firm, South Pole, the World Cup in Qatar generated 3.63 million tons of CO₂ emissions.
One of the assumptions underlying this number was that the six permanent new stadiums built for the World Cup would be used for the next 60 years. Carbon Market Watch told Bloomberg that this assumption is “extremely unlikely”.
Non-additional offsets
The 3.63 million tons of emissions were supposed to be “offset” by buying carbon credits. Research by SourceMaterial found that FIFA planned to buy carbon credits from the Doha-based Global Carbon Council (GCC). The GCC allows renewable energy projects to generate carbon offsets, despite the fact that these projects are economically feasible without carbon finance and are therefore not additional.
In fact FIFA retired less than 1.1 million carbon credits. That’s not even one-third of South Pole’s underestimate of 3.6 million tons of CO₂ emissions.
Dufrasne told Bloomberg that the Global Carbon Council’s credits “will make no difference whatsoever to global emissions”. He added that, “What GCC is offering here is at best ignorant, and at worst an obvious attempt to create more supply of low quality, low cost credits with an illusion of credibility.”
Bloomberg described the offsetting plan as “deeply flawed”.
Qatar and FIFA not only aren’t mitigating the environmental impact of the event, they may be inadvertently magnifying it.
FIFA also announced that it would use a solar power plant to offset 50% of the World Cup’s emissions. But this solar project is not registered under any carbon standard. It may be a beneficial project but as Carbon Market Watch notes, it provides “no climate benefits that could not otherwise have been achieved in wealthy Qatar”.
Actually, all offsets are a scam
Of course it’s great that the Swiss advertising regulatory body ruled that FIFA’s claims of carbon neutrality are false. But it would have been even better had they acknowledged that any claim of carbon neutrality based on offsets is false.
All offsetting plans are deeply flawed. Criticising GCC’s credits as “low quality” gives the impression that if only FIFA had bought “high quality” offsets, all would have been well.
The reality is that the emissions from the World Cup definitely took place. Thousands of fans flew to watch the football games. The construction of air-conditioned stadiums resulted in large emissions.
SLK ruled that “FIFA was not able to provide proof that the claims were accurate during the proceedings as required by the commission”. That would have been true no matter where FIFA bought its carbon offsets.
It’s time to ditch the idea of carbon offsetting completely. And time to ditch the idea that there is such a thing as “high quality” offsets. They are all junk.
Didn’t you see the dip in the Keeling Curve during the Qatar games? Nobody did since the offsets are worthless.
Sports exists primarily to relieve human boredom. Hello, people - we are in a planetary catastrophe from CO2 emissions - shouldn’t we be doing everything possible to eliminate all unnecessary travel, especially flying? Should I care if you are bored? Learn to live a simpler life, Life depends on it!