Clubs, players, extreme weather, longer reads and more
Round-up #38
Hello all,
As I was writing this round-up, three slightly longer pieces popped on to the page. These delve into more detail on grassroots football, The FA’s progress, and Man City’s annual sustainability report. They follow on here from the regular round-ups of developments in the last fortnight. Are these longer-reads useful? Any views on what they say? Drop me a line with any insights you have. In the meantime, on to the round-up first.
Fran
Clubs
Borussia Dortmund’s latest annual report identifies ecological risk as one of its six main categories of risk. It includes mention that “the public debate about professional football's impact on climate change is becoming increasingly more heated, and clubs can expect to be exposed to reputational risks if they cannot demonstrably reduce or, if possible, avoid the CO2 emissions”. The report also has a useful section on ‘environmental responsibility’ setting out recent and upcoming actions.
Charlton Athletic FC announced a new commercial partnership with a waste company which the club say reflects the club's commitment to sustainable practices.
Manchester United FC’s flight to Porto for their Europa League match was delayed due to severe weather. It’s another example that weather impacts are not just on grounds, but can also be on the travel for matches by players and fans.
Real Betis Balompié. Heloisa De Souza of The Good Football writes an open letter to the club.
Spurs defended flying back from Manchester to north London after their game with Manchester United.
Tadcaster Albion FC have told the BBC it could go bust if it keeps having to foot the cost of repairing flood damage as flooding at the ground had been getting more severe and frequent.
Udinese Calcio, in a Forbes article, say they have a goal to become the first carbon free stadium in Italy within three to five years.
AFC Wimbledon are welcoming the return of football at their home ground following recent flooding, though not all facilities are yet operational.
Community Sports Trusts in action included: The Manchester United Foundation hosting a workshops with student Eco Reds ambassadors
Extreme Weather
Hurricane Helene
“sometimes the rallying cry around a team is about more than the game on the field” said NWSL team NC Courage as they donated game proceeds and accepted donations to relief efforts. Elsewhere, the organisation for US professional women’s soccer players, the NWSLPA, saw their offices severely impacted. Separately, the owner of Charlotte FC donated $3 million to relief efforts.
Hurricane Milton
Clubs including Orlando City SC, Orlando Pride and Tampa Bay Sun FC have supported communication efforts about the hurricane. Prior to landfall several sports teams in the region put in place changes of plans for upcoming games.
In Tampa Bay, the baseball stadium of Tampa Bay Rays, was severely damaged as this dramatic footage shows. The Al Lang Stadium, home of Tampa Bay Rowdies, was partly damaged and Inter Miami CF have lent the club their facilities to use for training. Support for relief efforts has come from Louisville City FC and New Mexico United.
Elsewhere
All matches in Bosnia and Herzegovina were postponed last weekend following floods and landslides that killed at least 21 people.
"Forecasting thermal stress for sports tourists at the 2026 FIFA World Cup" in the International Journal of Biometeorology. The article says “Researchers have primarily focused on the athlete (e.g. health, performance), with far less attention given to spectator physical interaction with the natural environment. It finds that “many destination-bound tourists will be at elevated risk to heat”.
In other news
In a social media post that’s already had 2 million views, Paul Merson spoke to BBC Sport about the threat to grassroots football from climate change (more on grassroots football below).
Green Football Weekend will return on 14-16 March 2025 with a focus on reusing old sport kit.
Can football lead the way in sustainable fashion? asks Joanna Czutkowna of 5THREAD in The Interline’s Sustainability Report 2024. It includes 5 key take-aways for the wider fashion industry.
A Carbon Market Watch analysis says that UEFA ups its climate game while FIFA continues to miss the target
A 'What in the World' BBC World Service episode on: How is climate change affecting sport? And how are elite sporting events contributing to climate change?
The FA of Wales announced the clubs applying for men’s tier 1 licenses. The licensing includes environmental sustainability requiring clubs to have a strategy and put policies in place.
EURO’s
Women’s EURO 2025 tickets went on sale. Ticket holders traveling within Switzerland will enjoy free public transport on match-days. It’s not clear yet whether other environmental initiatives from the Men’s EURO 2024 will be adopted, such as discounted inter-rail travel, and a climate fund for local amateur clubs.
Sport Positive Summit 2024
Chris Boardman, Chair of Sport England an arms-length Government body, gave a keynote speech calling for a mindset shift and lifting of ambition. He said it's not surprising FIFA faced accusations of 'greenwashing' or that UEFA has been criticised for putting growth first and planet second. He called Premier League action wildly inconsistent and praised The FA saying it has fantastic work under way (more on that assessment of the FA’s work is below). The speech also included a focus on reducing flying, and on the need for as much focus on public influencing as on internal operations by organisations.
To coincide with the conference, the Centre for Sport and Human Rights launched a new project looking at Sport, Human Rights and Climate Action
Summit attendees Mark Doidge and Joanna Czutkowna have provided reflections online. As others appear I’ll share those too.
Cycling
Motherwell FC, working with Pedal to The Pitch, are offering free cycle hire for a ride to their League Cup Semi-Final match at Hampden. Elsewhere, Brentford FC fans held an organised ride to their game with Wolves. Separately, Ecolosport looks at walking and cycling to sports events in France.
Awards and recognition
Massive congratulations to the winners of the BBC Green Sport Awards 2024, 2024 BASIS Sustainable Sport Awards, Sport Positive Awards and the winners in sustainability categories at the ECA Awards.
And a huge round of a applause for the ground-breaking grassroots Save Today, Play Tomorrow programme which has been honoured with the first-ever King's Awards for Enterprise in Sustainable Development.
And …
Tom Davies spoke to The Mirror about his off-the-pitch sustainability pursuits.
The East Kilbride Community Trust is installing solar panels at its facilities. Glasgow City FC goalkeeper, Lee Alexander visited the facilities and helps set out the wider benefits for the community.
Social Football Summit host, Ivan Ortenzi, proposes there is a symbolic shift happening from the “Golden Goal” to the “Green Goal”.
In The Conversation: Why it’s so hard to kick fossil fuels out of sport by Theo Frixou of Loughborough University.
The Deutsche Football Liga and the German Football Association have supported a further education programme around sustainability.
Norway’s national football stadium has the world’s largest vertical solar roof. How does it work?
Longer Reads
Save Our Grassroots
The Save Our Grassroots campaign launched this week, backed by lots of well known names. It included a Marshelona FC vs Real Mudrid FC game. Expect more coverage to follow.
The call to action is for people to recount their favourite grassroots memory, and call on MP’s to save grassroots sport. A question that follows on from this is, what can MP’s do? Here’s some ideas to throw in to the pot.
For me, an answer falls into two buckets. Firstly, MP’s can drive forward climate action in general across all key policies and with more ambition, pace, and delivery. That’s a much bigger agenda with potentially big impacts than I can cover here. Secondly MP’s can support more sport-specific actions. Here I’ll focus on the latter, recognising its one part of a bigger picture for action.
First of all, a bit of context. The previous Government launched a sport strategy in August 2023. This included a section on environmental sustainability. Since then, the Game Changer II Report has provided new analysis on the impacts of climate change on sport, and made recommendations for further action. In addition, a Sport England survey has provided important new insights on the impacts of extreme weather on sport and physical activity. And separately, the 2023/24 football season has provided more evidence of the damaging impacts of extreme weather on grassroots football (see here and here).
These developments strengthen the case for more action than we are seeing, particularly in football. Alongside this, following the 2024 General Election, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has said the new Government will prioritise support for the grassroots. Elswehere, the Chair of Sport England has called for more action on environmental sustainability (see above).
In the light of these developments, it is right to look again at whether the environmental actions set out by the last Government go far enough. This leads to a suggestion that a key action MP’s could take would be to support a review of environmental sustainability and grassroots sport to address the wide range of issues these new developments point to.
This could be taken forward by MP’s in a number of ways. For instance, it could be a Government-led review, either internally by officials or through an independent review. Alternatively, a Select Committee of MP’s could decide to undertake a Parliament-led review and report recommendations. Other approaches could be for MP’s to ask questions in Parliament, and/or for interested MP’s to come together and form an all-party group on sport and sustainability. Yet another would be for MP’s to encourage governing bodies to undertake and publish reviews.
These are just a few suggestions and looking from the outside-in its hard to know what the best approach and focus would be. But what’s clear is a business-as-usual approach will not meet the challenges ahead. Asking MP’s to take action can open up a range of options and build momentum for change.
This all needs to be put in context of more climate action being needed on a much wider set of issues too. I’d be grateful for any views you have on what MP’s can do. But most of all, take action to make your voice heard with MP’s too!
The FA’s progress on environmental sustainability
As noted above, the Chair of Sport England has said positive words about the work the FA has underway on environmental sustainability. This note will look at what we know about The FA’s work to-date, and give some views on progress.
The FA published a sustainability strategy in July 2023 (the Premier League and EFL do not yet have one). At that time this newsletter noted a lack of detail in the FA strategy and many important unanswered questions on key issues. These still stand. For instance, The FA is yet to measure its yet to set a full emissions baseline (including full ‘scope 3’ emissions), its hard to see any work with other football bodies, and it is still not clear what the strategy is for resilience to more extreme weather. This suggests a progress report on the strategy is needed.
On the point about extreme weather, the climate-related financial disclosure in The FA’s latest annual report and financial statements does mention extreme weather risks (page 34). However, it only considers these as part of its highest risks as long-term risks and under a scenario of 4°C warming.
This contrasts with a growing regularity of extensions to club seasons due to weather impacts (extensions need to be approved by The FA). To further the point, due to weather impacts last season one of the County FA’s publicly stated they had formally expressed concerns to the FA raising “concerns for the wellbeing and safety of both players, officials and volunteers”. This suggests a further review of weather-related risks and mitigating actions are required ahead of the next annual report.
Turning briefly to other issues and developments in the last year …
The Chair of Sport England said there needs to be as much focus by organisations on public influencing as on internal operations. This is a point the applies to The FA too. The latest FA annual report sets out a number of practical actions they are taking on internal operations, but on public influencing a picture is harder to establish.
The FA, working through its County FA’s, has this week announced a partnership to better understand how people travel to and from football training and matches and help reduce emissions. This is a potentially interesting initiative. At this stage it’s unclear how many county FA’s are taking part and whether this will also be applied to fan travel to England games, and to the FA club competitions at Wembley.
Beyond this one new initiative I could not identify any public-facing initiative in the last year that are explicitly environmentally focussed (though Birmingham County FA is an example of excellent work progressing independently at a local level). And looking at public influence in terms of who an organisation partners with, The FA has recently partnered with Chase, part of JPMorganChase. Which? Magazine scored the bank lowest of all on environmental issues and put them in a “red” warning category for environmental impact.
A few final points:
The role that the (partly FA-funded) Football Foundation here deserves further attention than I can give here. A look at its recent annual reports suggests there is not any strategic focus on environmental issues, though some occasional engagement with environmental issues in response to some storms (but not others) and in relation to energy saving measures.
The Chair of Sport England has challenged top clubs to improve their efforts, particularly on air miles. National teams should not be excluded from those efforts, and England’s decision team to fly internally during the group stages of the EUROs has attracted criticism.
Alongside public influencing, the importance of policy influencing by organisations on climate issues is key. The FA can have an important role in influencing other key bodies, such as UEFA and FIFA. How active its voice is on environmental issues with these bodies is unclear.
In summary, this suggests that progress by the FA, like other organisations, is a mixed bag. It also shows the importance, not only of establishing a headline strategy, but moving beyond it to a focus on implementation, delivery and communication of progress (perhaps more is happening than is being reported publicly).
EURO 2028 in the UK and Ireland, will include a key role for The FA. It means a step change in focus on environmental issues and actions will be needed and is hopefully already underway. It highlights a need for a fundamental mindset shift and a lifting of ambition from all clubs, governing bodies, as well as other organisations and fans.
Manchester City Sustainability Report
Manchester City have just published the 20th annual edition of Game Plan, the club’s annual sustainability report. This newsletter previously looked at last year’s report, and a lot of the analysis provided then is still valid again. These reports from the club provide more data on emissions, and information on club policies and initiatives, than any other club does by a big margin. Developments this year include large-scale plans for solar panels at their training ground, trialling a match-day bus network for fans, and reduction of water usage by over 20%.
The report also has helpful summaries of some of the key frameworks and concepts on climate issues. At the same time, at 97 pages (49 pages shorter than last year!), and packed with technical data, its very hard for a lay-reader like myself to digest.
As with the reports of other clubs, its content has not been disclosed or assessed by expert organisations or initiatives, such as CDP, SBTI, or Net Zero Tracker. This means independent expert insights on it are lacking. In lieu of that, this note takes an initial look at a few key points. It’s a lay-reader perspective so please do provide clarifications and corrections where you see they are needed. I’ve also not given issues such as embodied emissions, apparel and sponsorship the attention that others are much better placed to. In no particular order …
Risks, opportunities and scenarios
The climate risks and opportunities in the report (pgs.55-63) provide useful insights on some of the key issues and challenges the club faces. Those familiar with the risks reported last year will note those for the club remain unchanged. Alongside this the report has also added individual analysis of all the City Football Group clubs, providing new global insights on different risks in different countries. Each club has a ‘medium’ overall risk level. I’d welcome any further views or analysis from people on what these different risks globally tell us.
At the same time the risk analysis, like last years, is limited to physical risks, so we get no analysis of potential transition risks, such as policy, legal or reputational risks (as Borussia Dortmund, above, recognise). Related to this the report says that the group is “managing its risks and actions based on the 1.5 degree C scenario but is also looking closely at both 2-degree and 4-degree risks”, though what this means in practice, and what difference it would make to risk management is unclear.
Manchester City were the first club to publish information on climate risks last year, and since then we have seen a handful of others publish information of risks too, albeit all taking very different approaches. Risk reporting across clubs is an issue that perhaps could be the focus of another post (and if anyone is up for providing a guest post, please get in touch!).
Reporting frameworks
Similarly to Liverpool, Manchester City adopt their own bespoke emissions reporting approach, meaning it is not aligned with the 15 categories in the GHG protocol scope 3 standard (which Spurs, Nottingham Forest and Wolves now utilise and which informs the UEFA carbon calculator framework). When no other club was reporting on their emissions, these bespoke approaches led the way. They now they seem increasingly out-dated and unhelpful as more standardised approaches to reporting and shared understandings emerge.
Elsewhere, Manchester City make reference to the club helping develop and make use of UEFA’s new calculator tool but it is not clear how it has been used in practice, particularly in the presentation of data. Separately, all Premier League’s clubs have committed to a standardised approach to measuring emissions from 2025/26 and we should expect to see this adopted here and elsewhere in the near future.
Data
On the emissions reporting itself, the chief headline presented in the report is that “City reduces CO2 emissions by 16% in the year – that’s 5,841 tonnes”. The biggest reductions in emissions come from “Match special away days” (partly related to less Champions League games) at -1,988tCO2e; “Authorised Business Travel” -1,392tCO2e; and “Non Match Day Operations” at -841.20tCO2e. The biggest increase is in men’s team travel at +320tCO2e. The club says this is “a result of extended 2023/24 summer travel, World Club Cup and Super Cup finals, as well as all other growing business requirements”.
Further context on this headline 16% year-on-year reduction in emissions is essential. The figure refers to the figure in the ‘actual total’ line reported in the table on page 9. Looking back at two more years we see that the ‘actual total’ emissions decreased 31.8% from 2019/20 to 2021/22, before increasing by 50.6% between 2021/22 and 2022/23, and again dropping 16% in this most recent report.
This highlights significant variation in emissions year-on-year and suggests a need to look at longer-term trends rather than single year headlines. While data is available going back to 2004 (in this report), efforts to identify trends are hampered by significant changes to the reporting approach over time.
This is particularly notable in this year’s report in relation to “Authorised Travel (Business)”. In the previous annual report, the figure for 2022/23 was reported as 969tCO2e, in this report that 2022/23 figure has been updated to 13,664tCO2e, a huge change.
It means that the club is now reporting more emissions from its own internal authorised business travel (12,272 tCO2e) than it is from all fan travel (11,729 tCO2e), and this before we add in player travel (c.1,000 tCO2e). However, given the lack of detail on what this figure includes, plus the potential for further significant revisions, this and other figures should be treated cautiously.
Manchester City are not alone in revisiting and significantly revising old figures, Liverpool did the same between their first and second ‘Red Way’ reports (merchandise emissions for 2021/22 were revised by over 57,000 tCo2e between publications). On the one hand some revision of previous figures and iteration in approaches is to be expected year-on-year in keeping up with emerging best practice. However, when these revisions involve seeing previously reported figures change by 30%-50% it impairs confidence in what is being reported, and any assessment of whether the club is on-track or not to meet its net-zero target, or needs to take further action.
This further highlights the need to move to a consistent, shared reporting framework for clubs. How can we shoot for goals if we’re not sure how far from the net we are, and if teams are playing to different rules that can change with each game?
Elsewhere in the report, Page 10 shows that scope 1 and 2 emissions, and kWh energy use, are up year-on-year and also over the 5 year period since the base year. The large-scale introduction of solar panels should make a dent in these figures in future reporting periods, though the statement on page 16 that the solar panels “will result in a reduction of approximately 150,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year” seems out by an order of magnitude to me. But please drop me a line if I have have misunderstood this.
Summary
In summary, there is a lot here to digest and clearly a lot of action being undertaken by the club. The data shows a year-on-year progress, though that data should be treated with caution and not in isolation. A greater focus on the context, consistency, and communication of the reporting would help clarify longer-term trends, and whether enough progress is being made towards net zero. This is a challenge for other clubs too. At the same time, this is not intended to be comprehensive read of the report and is one lay reader's perspective of a rather big and challenging document. All further insights, analysis, corrections and comments, are welcome!
And now we face the final curtain. As ever, comments, corrections, content suggestions and offers to write gust posts are welcome at any time. Over and out.
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
footballandclimatechange@gmail.com
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Thank you for mentioning The Good Football, Fran! Such a honour!