The Euros and environmental sustainability

What's planned, what's the context, and what next?

Jun 14, 2024

Hello!

It's almost time for me to grab a cold drink, find a place on the sofa, and turn on the screen for EURO 2024 and Copa América. Before I do that, here is a long-read / collection of thoughts on the Euros. There’s already been some great pieces by others too, and they are at this end of the post.

If I can prise myself away from the action, there may be a further post or two during the tournaments. And in the meantime, feel free to get in touch. Otherwise, catch you on the other side, and enjoy!

Fran

Promoting sustainability

UEFA has said sustainability will be in the DNA of EURO 2024. 2.7m tickets have been sold and there will be a watching audience reaching into the billions. It means there is a big opportunity to promote, encourage, and take action on environmental sustainability.

It also means it will be particularly interesting to see how visible that sustainability is during the tournament. I'll aim to round-up the stories and perspectives in a future post.

In the meantime, this post takes a bit of a step back. It looks at things particularly in the context of UEFA’s commitment to reduce emissions 50% by 2030 and be net zero by 2040.

Actions and initiatives

The tournament sustainability strategy covers a wide range of environmental, social and governance issues. It includes 18 environment-related targets. For each of these, there are a bunch of supporting activities and indicators. In addition, UEFA, along with host cities and the Federal Government, have published 100 Sustainability Measures they are taking. This includes a ‘Football for Sustainability’ Summit in Berlin just before the final. If anyone is attending that and wants to provide feedback afterwards, please get in touch!

Among all the planned actions, I’ll just take a look here at two for now, while recognising this is only a part of the picture.

1. Transport

It is well established that transport emissions are one of the big contributors to the overall picture of football emissions. For EURO 2024, UEFA’s transport initiatives include group matches being clustered by geography. This aims to make travel between games shorter and easier for teams and fans. As a bit of a comparison, at Copa América, World Cup winners Argentina will cover around 3,000km between their 3 group-stage games - much further than any EURO 2024 team will travel.

As part of this clustering, the plans include a specific focus on encouraging and support teams to travel by train. With the actions of teams influential on the behaviour of others, its an important and visible issue. Figures from UEFA say that at EURO 2016 “over 75% of team transfers to group stage matches were done by plane. In Germany that figure will drop to 25%”. It suggests more work should be carried out on the role of geographical clustering in all competitions.

For fans, there are discounts on train travel to the tournament and between cities. In cities, there is free public transport on match-days, and in many, also extra cycling provisions. Although some of this is not new, it is good its happening and that its being publicised, along with the environmental reasons for doing it.

It will be important to understand what impact all these transport related actions have on tournament emissions. Reporting after the tournament should help with that. In the meantime, if you are going to the tournament - lucky you! - it would be great to hear if and how these actions have influenced your travel.

2. Climate Fund

Despite all the planned actions, the tournament will still produce ‘unavoidable’ emissions1. In response, UEFA has created a €7m climate fund to support amateur clubs in Germany to undertake environmental projects.

It’s notable that this initiative came from a Government push for it. This helps highlight the role that national and regional authorities can have in influencing the climate actions of football bodies, and could again in the future.

The initiative is also a clear move away from the carbon offsetting that UEFA used for EURO 2020 and 2016. With some clubs currently using offsets, and others not, it leads to a question about whether UEFA now needs to produce guidelines on carbon credits. But I’d welcome other/alternative expert views on this.

At €7m the size of the EURO 2024 climate fund is lower than options identified in an independent report (ranging from €11m to €56m see table 6.2) and should be put in the context of UEFA’s budgeted revenue for 2023/24, which is €6.7 billion. While it is a smaller fund than it might have been, its important to understand for its future potential.

So far the fund has supported 161 projects to the tune of €6.2m. In total, there have been 4,326 applications. It suggests there is big untapped potential to support more of amateur football if more funding was available - though again we will have to wait to understand more on its impacts.

Finally, and more quietly, there has been another interesting innovation here. UEFA is part-financing the climate fund through a donation requested on all stadium car parking. See, for instance the Cologne matchday stadium travel.

The most sustainable EUROs ever?

UEFA has previously said that this will be the most sustainable EUROs ever though a post by UEFA yesterday did not repeat that line. In terms of tournament emissions specifically, its hard to verify.

Independent research for the German Government estimated tournament emissions at 490,000 tCO2e, though this is not a figure UEFA itself has used, and was arrived at before UEFA initiatives were announced. At a recent event a UEFA official mentioned a forecast of 423,000 tCO2e, and at an event last year another UEFA official mentioned a target of 350-360,000 tCO2e.

Estimates were not part of the bidding or evaluation processes for hosting (but should be for all major tournaments). Separately, the tournament sustainability strategy talks about measuring and reducing emissions. But from what to what is unclear.

The same independent research also notes the figures could in practice be significantly higher or lower. They highlight the proportion of tickets sold to fans outside Germany as “a very influential variable” on overall emissions2.

For EURO 2020 the same research team estimated 220,000 tCO2e - significantly lower due to lower attendances (at 1.1m) because of covid restrictions. For EURO 2016, emissions were put at 2.8m tCO2e, largely due to stadium renovation and construction - which may also end up being a significant part of the 2028 and 2032 emissions totals.

Taking out these stadium renovations - which is a somewhat artificial exercise - a figure of 600,000 tCO2e was identified for 2016. This suggests that EURO 2024 emissions will turn out to be lower than 2016 and higher than the covid-affected 2020 tournament.

None of this takes into account earlier tournaments, partly it seems, as there is a lack of comparable data. Before it was expanded to 24 teams in 2016, EURO tournaments had fewer matches and fewer attendees. This makes it highly likely they would also have had much less emissions too. Take for instance, EURO 2000 (which my wife and I went to!). It took place in Belgium and Netherlands over distances that were more compact than EURO 2024, and with 16 rather than 24 teams.

Finally, a key question here is whether the data shows if UEFA is on track to meet its 2030 and 2040 targets? It doesn’t seem possible to answer this due to a lack of comparable and consistent data, a lack of clarity on the starting point, and the big variations from tournament to tournament. This lack of detailed data also makes it hard to tell what initiatives have been effective, and which not.

Looking longer-term, it’s also hard to see how EURO 2028 (in UK and Ireland) and 2032 (in Italy and Turkey) will achieve further cuts in emissions in support of the headline targets. Taken together, these issues suggest further creative thinking, reforms and innovations will be essential.

A bit more context

EURO 2024 finals are 51 matches every 4 years. UEFA also organises over 20 tournaments for clubs and countries. This means thousands of UEFA tournament games over the same 4-year period of the EUROs.

Emissions from all these may run into the millions of tonnes of CO2e, but no figures exist for their carbon footprints, and we have no sense of the scale of the challenge here.

It also means there are no figures on the impacts of increases in the size of tournaments. For instance, UEFA’s Champions League, Europa League, and Conference League will increase by a combined 155 extra games per season from this year, with seemingly no environmental impact considered.

Responsibility for emissions reporting largely sits with clubs (with a few exceptions like the EURO finals). But, importantly, very little reporting is happening, and UEFA does not mandate it. A small number of clubs are beginning to provide reports. New CSRD requirements should eventually mean around 150 European clubs have to. And UEFA’s voluntary carbon calculator tool should help with understanding the scale of European football emissions.

However this looks set to take a long time, by which time we may have reached 2030 and its not clear we’ll get a full and clear picture due the largely voluntary approach. Perhaps a helpful complimentary approach could be for UEFA, or another body, to commission a specific research project over a short time period to come up with estimates for these tournaments, and propose interim targets towards 2030 and 2040.

This is not to say these efforts at EURO 2024 are not worthwhile. In fact, the opposite. There is a strong case for understanding what’s worked well at the tournament and rolling it out at scale for other tournaments. At the same time the Euros can help understand what’s not worked, help identify where there are deeper issues that need addressing, and also provide a huge platform to raise awareness.

Extreme Weather

The recent floods in Germany are a reminder of the devastating impacts of extreme weather. Whilst no extreme weather is forecast for the first days of this tournament, its likelihood of affecting future tournaments is growing. The floods and disruption to top-flight football in Brazil highlight that this is not some far-in-the-future issue.

A new report for World Rugby finds that the sport can expect a range of extreme weather challenges. This includes more extreme heat days, droughts, floods and heavy rainfall. This will increasingly affect players, spectators and infrastructure. The report says:

“Stakeholders at the high performance/international level of the game should prepare for a range of new constraints that climate change is likely to require, including changes to event calendars (number of games, season length, practice/playing times)”

Elsewhere, the International Olympic Commission is looking at radically different options for the Winter Olympics. At present, we are seeing little, if any, analysis and preparation by football authorities. UEFA’s annual report talked about potential heat risks at the EUROs and work on new regulations. However, nothing has materialised so far on this and timings for delivery are unclear.

Longer-term, hosting decisions for EURO 2028 (UK and Ireland) and 2032 (Italy and Turkey) have been made seemingly with no risk assessment of potential extreme weather impacts. A starter-for-ten here - learning from the approach taken by World Rugby - would be for a report to be commissioned on the matter, bringing in independent experts, and making recommendations.

What’s next?

Last week, in a major climate speech the United Nations Secretary-General said of the battle to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees “All depends on the decisions those leaders take – or fail to take – especially in the next eighteen months”. In the same speech he also made a landmark call for a ban on fossil fuel advertising. This is an issue which Fossil Free Football and partners have looked at in terms of the Euros - proposing the banning of polluting, fossil-fuel dependent sponsors.

The UN Secretary-General also called for all organisations to have robust transition plans in place by COP30 next year in Brazil. These plans should align with 1.5 degrees, cover emissions across the entire value chain, and include interim targets and transparent verification processes. UEFA (and many other organisations) have a lot to do to get these plans in place, and to get on with the actions to deliver on them.

The extra focus, actions and initiatives for EURO 2024 are to be welcomed. They are a step in the right direction and an opportunity to learn lessons and build momentum. At the same time, it's not at all clear its enough to help deliver UEFA’s target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 and being net zero by 2040.

EURO 2024 helps to provide a focus to several issues that will need further action as part of a bigger overall plan. These include: more clarity and consistency on the impact of tournaments, actions to cut transport emissions, supporting climate initiatives for amateur football, embedding environmental issues in all decision-making, understanding what progress on targets is being made, and course correcting where needed.

To this can be added other key issues such as addressing the impacts of extreme weather, modernising sponsorship and advertising rules, the size of the overall football calendar, more targeted communication, and advocating for reforms by and with key partners.

This is a lot to be getting on with, and it needs to be a joint effort effort with all in the football community playing their part. Luckily, UEFA has a review of its sustainability strategy envisaged for 2025. The work on that needs to begin now.

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