Actions, talk, reports and more
Round up #42
Welcome to the first round-up of 2025! I hope you enjoyed the festive period, and are coming back to things recharged and ready to go again.
After this newsletter post I’m going to experiment with increasing the frequency of these round-ups. So rather than fortnightly-ish, expect 3-4 a month, and let’s see how that goes.
And with that, let’s get on to the news and developments since the last round-up.
Fran
Quick links: Top top, Club focus, Sustainability talk, In other news, World Cup 2026 Sustainability and Human Rights Strategy, Longer Read: UEFA’s 2023/24 Respect Report, A few wider related developments.
Top top
The new Marshall Islands 2030 Alternative Jersey highlights that they are in danger of facing irreversible changes to their environment as early as 2030.
Club focus
Barcelona and the City Council have presented a sustainable mobility plan for the partial return of the club to the Spotify Camp Nou.
Borussia Dortmund has committed to Science Based Targets Initiative, the second club to do so after Arsenal.
Brighton are piloting 20% of train travel for fans for two of their away games, with the aim of promoting sustainable travel to matches.
Exeter City’s new rental vehicle partnership will see over 50% of vehicles supplied to the club being fully electric.
Juventus presented their new ESG Strategy: Black, White & More. Two of the six pillars of it are dedicated to the environment.
Luton Town’s new stadium plan has been approved subject to “the resolution of the objection raised by the Lead Local Flood Authority” who have said “The site is at medium and high surface water flood risk … It must be clear that the proposals are not going to put future users of the site at risk”. There’s plenty more environmental-related points in the planning documents.
Lydney Town. A BBC update on the club hit by Storm Bert and facing 'horrific disruption'.
Manchester United travelled by train to Spurs. Separately, they are planning a post-season trip to Malaysia. The FA is reportedly looking at banning these friendlies.
West Brom, and a story of its club crest and the endangered throstle. Separately, West Brom are hosting a Goals for a sustainable future event at the club.
West Ham published their 2023/2024 in their annual accounts. It mostly excludes Scope 3 emissions, the largest part of a club’s emissions. And as the club does not own their ground, they do not report on that energy use and emissions. Reported emissions are 14% up on year, and down an average 1.75% per year over 5 years. Energy use is up 10.3% on year and 33% over 4 years.
Carbon Boot awards went to Aston Villa, Chelsea and Leicester City for their short flights.
Community Sports Trusts in action included Carlisle United.
Sustainability talk
Among SportsPro’s predictions for 2025 is one that says “Call it climate action fatigue. Call it an unwillingness to truly embrace different ways of operating … the surge of enthusiasm that mobilised sport in the wake of the Paris agreement is already fizzling out, tempered by a dawning reality that cutting emissions is far harder than many might have hoped … I suspect we’ll see a noticeable shift in tone and language when industry executives talk about sustainability in 2025.”
A response posted by the Sustainability Huddle says that climate action needs a rebrand, the story needs reframing, and also that action isn’t out of fashion everywhere - the real challenge is sports organisations’ willingness to adapt. Alongside this I’d add that evidence shows people broadly want what a green transition can deliver, over three quarters of people believe business can have an impact on tackling climate change and previous surveys of fans suggest that expectations of more action are strong.
In 2025, it will be important to understand how organisations are acting and talking on sustainability, and how these do or don’t match up to peoples expectations.
In other news
Player awards:
Sofie Junge Pederson has been given The Guardian Footballer of the Year for her climate activism.
Internacional’s Thiago Maia won the FIFA Fair Play Award for his actions in response to the historic flooding in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
Jobs:
In more news:
Hannah Waddingham, Football and a Plastic-Free World. A Video for The Earthshot Prize.
The Clean Air Champions League launched aiming to use football’s reach to help tackle air pollution across Europe. The fascinating project is led by Bohemian Football Club with a diverse range of clubs and organisations involved
The International Climate Change Development Initiative, working in Nigeria and across Africa, is leveraging football to create awareness and drive advocacy regarding climate change
2025 Prediction: Clubs' ‘postponed-due-the-weather’ videos will become a sub-genre in their own right. Here is Leatherhead FC with one.
The FT reports on why the Paris Olympics travel emissions raise concerns for future events. It says that “Transport had been expected to account for about a third of the Paris Games’ carbon footprint but ended up accounting for 53 per cent” and also mentions that “Experts said a disconnect remained between the traditional Olympic host city goal of record ticket sales and reducing travel emissions.” There appears to be parallels to EURO 2024 and other major football tournaments.
National bodies:
The Football Association of Ireland launched its first Social and Environmental Sustainability Strategy.
The Italian Football Federation has created a new online platform, Sostenabilia. It will include constantly updated news and information, showcase role models, and provide educational resources.
Many football clubs are included among the 97 sports clubs receiving £1.7m of funding from Sport Wales to make energy-saving improvements to their sporting premises.
Extreme Weather:
Tropical Cyclone Chido has left over 150 dead and many more missing. Footballer, Dimitri Payet was among those supporting response efforts. Separately, President Macron visited cyclone-hit Mayotte.
Where should sports events be held under global warming? A case study of the African Cup of Nations (Afcon) in the journal, Sustainable Cities and Society, says that climate change could reduce the number of countries suitable for hosting the tournament.
World Cup 2026 Sustainability and Human Rights Strategy
FIFA has published its World Cup 2026 Sustainability and Human Rights Strategy, originally due in 2023. The approach to the strategy for this World Cup is to provide some overall context and information on objectives and initiatives, and largely devolve responsibility to host cities to come up with further plans and deliver on them.
The environmental pillar includes a number of high-level objectives and initiatives, but no quantified scale or targets for them, and no mention of any adaptation initiatives. In addition, there isn’t an update on the expected tournament emissions, which were previously estimated as 3.7m tCO2e before the tournament was expanded from 80 to 104 games.
FIFA had previously said it was “developing a comprehensive sustainability strategy that will cover a number of key areas, including environmental protection.” This appears to fall short of being comprehensive at this point. It’s not clear if any of the plans from host cities, or further information from FIFA, will be published, and if so, when.
Elsewhere in World Cup related news:
30 Members of the European Parliament have written to FIFA expressing “grave concerns” about the 2034 World Cup decision. They call for FIFA to take immediate action and develop a credible strategy for the 2034 World Cup including binding commitments on reducing emissions.
Carbon Market Watch has written on FIFA’s “foul, irresponsible, farcical, and absurd approach to the climate”.
Longer Read: UEFA’s 2023/24 Respect Report
As we were all opening the last few doors on our advent calendars, UEFA published its 2023/24 Respect Report. The report takes stock of UEFA’s social and sustainability actions in the context of its long-term football sustainability strategy to 2030.
As ever with these reports, it's a mixed bag. On the one hand UEFA is clearly ahead of other global football confederations and FIFA in its approach and action. On the other hand, it highlights that UEFA still has a way to go to address big challenges ahead. Here are a few comments focussed solely on the environmental aspects. I recommend you tuck in to it yourselves and please share any comments you have.
Important positive developments in the period include: 100% of member associations now having a sustainability manager and strategy (could they create a single page with links to all these?); an upgrading in sustainability requirements for club licencing in UEFA regulations; the launch of a UEFA Carbon Calculator; and several actions implemented for EURO 2024. This included a Climate Fund for amateur teams in the host nation of national tournaments. This also represented a wider move away by UEFA from offsetting.
This newsletter has previously looked at these actions and considered how they could also go further. There is also news of important further actions to come, including
working to include embodied carbon emissions in infrastructure in the UEFA carbon calculator, working with experts to create a dedicated document.
mention that Social and Environmental Sustainability managers for each of the UEFA members “will be responsible for the development of a comprehensive action plan to facilitate the implementation of their association’s sustainability strategy”.
a carbon reduction plan under validation by top UEFA management, prioritising initiatives addressing business travel by UEFA. Internal organisational travel emissions were 16,053 tCO2e in 23/24.
Further tools to support sustainable events throughout the football ecosystem.
Alongside this, it's good to see this report include transparency on governance, an often overlooked but key aspect on climate action.
All this said, here are three areas where further progress will be needed. Firstly, on adaptation and resilience, where there is currently a lack of strategy at UEFA and national levels. This reflects, at least to some extent, a lack of planning for these risks that goes beyond football.
2024 has seen extreme weather cause significant disruptions, costs and impacts to football in Spain, Central Europe, and Brazil. More generally, news that Europe is warming at twice the rate of the global average, and that EU watchdogs call for disaster-relief fund in wake of Valencia floods should add to further attention being given by UEFA to this area. This is a challenge facing all football bodies. However, UEFA’s leadership here moving forward will be particularly key.
Secondly, more work is needed on understanding and reducing emissions in football. The UEFA carbon calculator is a welcome development, but we are still way off understanding European football’s emissions. While a handful of clubs in Europe voluntarily report on their emissions, and over 150 organisations are said to have used the calculator, actual reporting is still highly limited and lacks comparability (which again is also a wider issue).
We don’t know the emissions attributable to UEFA club tournaments, or the impacts of the recent increase in games in them each year. Also, we don’t know the full emissions attributable to national football associations. For instance, there is no measurement of the qualifying and friendly matches of national teams. And separately, on national team finals, for EURO 2024 we had two very different reports on the total emissions.
Separately, important emissions categories in UEFA’s carbon calculator need further clarification (with some work underway on this front). Elsewhere, pioneering clubs are moving to science-based targets, raising the question of whether UEFA and other should too.
As stated above, the carbon calculator is a welcome start and key building-black. At the same time, what needs to be managed has barely been measured yet. This shouldn't get in the way of continued action, but it does make it very hard to understand what the scale of the issue is, where to prioritise efforts, what targets are needed, and UEFA’s and others best roles within all this. While work is underway amongst clubs and bodies, and new CSRD requirements should drive further action too, the pace needs to pick-up.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, some points on advocacy and engagement. There is a section in both the Respect Strategy and in the annual report on ‘Climate and Advocacy’. The term ‘advocacy’ here appears to be mainly used in relation to influencing decisions by national associations and clubs, while the section on ‘partners and society’ is largely focussing on commercial partners. Is there more that could be done in engaging with, and advocating to, both fans and also policy-makers?
Could, for instance, UEFA aim to become a Corporate Climate Policy Engagement Leader in future years? And is there more UEFA could do to engage with fans? This could be by doing more directly itself, building on what it already does for its own tournaments. Or perhaps better still - working with its member associations, players, supporters and experts to come up with an engagement strategy, guidelines or tools, for all its members? There are a number of initiatives already being undertaken by football associations, clubs, individuals and organisations, but bringing a fresh and collective focus - bigger than the sum of its parts - may reap big benefits.
Next steps
When published in 2021, UEFA’s Sustainability Strategy said that “A review of the strategy’s effectiveness and architecture is envisaged for 2025”. Since 2021, circumstances have changed significantly on the climate agenda. Also, most of the targets in the original strategy are now being reported as achieved in this annual report. And at the same time key issues outlined above need further progress. The need for a review of UEFA’s sustainability strategy, building on successes and learning from where it can now be smarter, feels urgent.
There are plenty more issues in this annual report I could have delved into here but, to keep things shorter, I have not done so. If there is something you have a comment or question about, please drop me a line in any of the usual ways.
A few wider related developments
In football:
The Unify League proposals would see three new European club tournaments go ahead if implemented. If these replaced UEFA’s club tournaments it would mean the number of European club games increase by a further 35%.
A UEFA Convention on the Future of European Football was held in Brussels in December. Environmental issues did not make it on to the agenda.
Scrutiny of The Football Governance Bill continues in the UK Parliament. The next session looking at the details is on 15 January. Environmental sustainability may or may not be discussed further.
In climate:
10th January will see several key meteorological and other organisations tracking the climate publishing summary data on 2024 global temperatures.
How to communicate climate target setbacks event hosted by Climate Outreach. It’s good to see this subject being talked about.
The number of properties (homes and businesses) in England at risk from flooding could increase to around 1 in 4 by mid-century says the Environment Agency.
85% of Investors Say Greenwashing is a Growing Problem according to an EY survey.
Climate change isn't 'woke' is an end-of-year editor’s blog in Business Green.
For the first time in 2025 it’s a chance to say … as ever, comments, corrections, content suggestions and offers to write guest posts are welcome at any time.
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
info@footballandclimate.org
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