en.Wedoany.com Reported - This World Cup is expected to be the most polluting tournament in history, with carbon emissions reaching 7.8 million tons of CO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.7 million cars or the annual emissions of Sierra Leone, according to scholars and activists. A report released last week by the global carbon accounting platform Greenly predicts that the expansion of the tournament to 48 teams and its distribution across 16 cities in three North American countries are the main drivers of the surge in carbon emissions, which are roughly more than double those of the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
Sports ecologist and author Madeleine Orr told Reuters that, in theory, the World Cup is valuable for promoting sports and visibility, but from a climate perspective, the cost is high. Research estimates that up to 87% of the tournament's emissions come from travel, especially flights, as millions of fans need to traverse North America to support their teams. The distance between Vancouver and Miami or Mexico City exceeds 4,000 kilometers, making this tournament far more carbon-intensive than the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which, despite criticism for building seven new stadiums, had total greenhouse gas emissions of about 3.8 million tons.
David Gogishvili, a geographer at the University of Lausanne, pointed out that although this tournament does not involve building new stadiums, the expansion of the number of teams and the distribution of matches across distant host cities merely shifts the environmental cost from one form to another. To reduce travel distances, the tournament has divided venues into three regional groups—Western, Central, and Eastern—but the England team and its fans bear the heaviest travel burden, with a total journey of nearly 2,800 kilometers for their three group stage matches in Dallas, Boston, and New Jersey.
At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26, FIFA committed to halving carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2040, but did not set specific emission reduction targets for the World Cup. Gogishvili compared FIFA to the International Olympic Committee, noting that the latter is "roughly on track to halve its carbon footprint by 2050, at least in the right direction." FIFA responded that it welcomes oversight and emphasized that FIFA and host cities are promoting environmental measures before, during, and after the tournament, including using existing stadiums, encouraging fans to use public transportation, reducing reliance on diesel generators, and implementing recycling and food waste reduction initiatives.
Madeleine Orr believes that the expansion of the tournament has added 16 teams, including four newcomers—Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan—"which is great for those countries, but at what cost?" She pointed out a long-overlooked major component of the tournament's carbon footprint: the digital footprint. The enormous energy consumption required for broadcasting, streaming, data flows, and betting platforms—from data centers and satellites to billions of devices in fans' hands—has a cumulative effect that is more pronounced in the modern multi-screen viewing era. The UK's National Grid Electricity System Operator estimates that each group stage match involving Scotland and England could increase national electricity consumption by 600 megawatts, equivalent to the total electricity demand of Glasgow and Leeds combined. Orr emphasized that the vast majority of viewers watch simultaneously on TV and mobile phones, and these emissions are rarely included in official tournament sustainability accounting, stressing that the full scope must be considered when assessing the event's impact.
Gogishvili, a lifelong Manchester United fan, admitted his love for football but made it clear that FIFA has not prioritized reducing negative environmental impacts, and that media, players, national football associations, researchers, governments, and citizens must apply pressure collectively.
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