As FIFA prepares for its upcoming World Cup tournaments from June 11 to July 19, 2026, its climate strategy is facing closer attention, too. The organization has set a goal to reach net zero emissions by 2040. It also aims to cut emissions by 50% by 2030.
These targets are part of FIFA’s long-term sustainability plan, which aligns with the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework and the Paris Agreement. FIFA first announced its climate strategy in 2021 and has since applied it across major tournaments.
However, the challenge is not setting targets. The real challenge is reducing emissions in a global event that depends on international travel. The World Cup is one of the most complex events to decarbonize because most emissions come from sources outside direct control.
FIFA’s Climate Commitments and Official Emissions Targets
FIFA’s climate strategy follows a structured pathway based on global climate standards. It includes measuring emissions, reducing them where possible, and offsetting what remains.
The organization has committed to three main actions:
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.
- Achieve net zero emissions by 2040.
- Align operations with international climate frameworks.
FIFA reports emissions using standard greenhouse gas accounting. This includes tracking emissions across tournaments, host cities, and operational activities.
In past tournaments, FIFA has introduced sustainability measures such as energy-efficient stadiums, waste reduction programs, and public transport planning. For example, several recent World Cup venues have used renewable electricity and modern cooling systems to reduce energy demand.
FIFA also works with host countries to improve infrastructure planning. This includes encouraging the use of existing stadiums and limiting new construction where possible. These steps aim to reduce emissions linked to building materials and long-term infrastructure.
Still, these efforts mainly affect operational emissions. The larger challenge lies beyond stadiums and facilities.
How Emissions Are Measured in the World Cup
FIFA measures emissions using the widely accepted Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 framework.
Scope 1 emissions come from direct sources such as fuel use in vehicles and on-site operations. Scope 2 emissions come from purchased electricity used in stadiums and facilities. These emissions can be reduced through renewable energy and efficiency improvements.
Scope 3 emissions include all indirect emissions linked to the event. These are the most complex and the largest category.
In the World Cup, Scope 3 emissions come from these sources:
- International and domestic travel by fans,
- Team and staff transportation,
- Accommodation and hospitality services,
- Supply chains and merchandise production, and
- Broadcasting and logistics operations.
In large global events, Scope 3 emissions often account for more than half of total emissions. The share is even higher due to the scale of international travel in football tournaments.
This structure shows that most emissions do not come from FIFA’s direct operations. They come from the wider system that supports the event.
By the Numbers: Inside the 3.7M Ton Carbon Footprint of 2026 World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is one of the largest global sporting events. The 2022 tournament in Qatar drew over 3.4 million spectators, according to FIFA, and reached billions of viewers worldwide. This level of participation creates a large environmental footprint.
For the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, total emissions are projected at around 3.7 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e). This estimate comes from the United 2026 bid’s environmental impact assessment. It reflects the full lifecycle footprint of the event, including travel, operations, and infrastructure.
Transportation is the main driver of these emissions. About 85% of total emissions are linked to travel, especially air travel. This includes both international flights and travel between host cities.
The scale of the 2026 tournament adds to this challenge. It will feature 48 teams, up from 32 in previous editions, and will span multiple countries and cities. This increases travel demand, distances between matches, and overall logistics complexity.
The structure of emissions can be summarized as follows:
- ~85% from travel-related activities (~3.15 million tonnes CO₂e)
- ~15% from operations, energy use, and infrastructure (~0.55 million tonnes CO₂e)
Travel emissions alone include:
- 51% from international journeys
- 34% from travel between host cities
Compared with more compact tournaments, this format leads to higher emissions due to increased reliance on long-distance flights.
Scope 3 Emissions: The Core Climate Challenge
The emissions profile of the World Cup highlights a clear imbalance. Most emissions fall under Scope 3, which includes indirect sources such as travel, logistics, and supply chains.
Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, which cover direct operations and energy use, represent only a small share of the total footprint. These can be reduced through renewable energy and efficient design.
Scope 3 emissions are different. They come from activities outside FIFA’s direct control. These include fan travel, team transport, global logistics, and services linked to the event. This creates a structural challenge. Even if FIFA reduces emissions from stadiums and operations, total emissions can remain high due to travel demand.
- In simple terms, the World Cup’s carbon footprint is driven more by movement than by infrastructure.
Scope 3 is also the hardest category to reduce. It depends on global travel patterns, geography, and individual choices. FIFA cannot fully control how fans travel or how often they move between cities.
This is why Scope 3 emissions are central to the climate challenge. They account for the largest share of emissions and the biggest barrier to reducing the World Cup’s overall footprint.
Cuts vs. Credits: The Ongoing Offset Debate
To meet its climate targets, FIFA uses both emissions reduction and carbon offsetting. Reduction focuses on lowering emissions at source. This includes improving energy efficiency, using renewable electricity, and optimizing event operations.
Offsetting is used to balance emissions that cannot be eliminated. This involves investing in projects that reduce or remove carbon emissions elsewhere.
FIFA’s approach includes:
- Reducing energy use in stadiums and facilities,
- Increasing the use of renewable electricity, and
- Supporting carbon offset projects for remaining emissions.
Carbon offsets can include projects such as reforestation, renewable energy development, and carbon capture. However, their effectiveness depends on project quality, verification, and long-term impact.
This has led to debate in climate policy. Some experts argue that offsets should not replace real emissions reduction. Others point out that offsets can support the transition when used carefully.
The key issue is transparency. Clear reporting and verified data are needed to ensure that net-zero claims reflect real outcomes.
Why Net Zero Is Difficult for Mega Sports Events
Mega sporting events like the World Cup have unique challenges. They are temporary, global, and highly mobile. Their emissions come from:
- International travel,
- Temporary infrastructure,
- Large-scale logistics, and
- Global audience participation.
Even with strong sustainability measures, these factors create a high baseline of emissions.
Take for example, the Paris 2024 Olympics. The event’s total footprint hit 1.7 million tonnes CO₂e. Travel caused 72%, that’s 1.2 million tonnes, from 720,000+ international visitors. Stadiums run on 100% renewables, but aviation emissions? Untouched.
Super Bowl LIX in 2025 told the same story. The event generated 400,000 tonnes CO₂e, with 85% coming from 150,000+ out-of-state fans flying to New Orleans. The NFL bought 400,000 offsets for carbon-neutral claims. Still, travel cuts? Zero.
This pattern is industry-wide. Organizers control stadium power. Fans control flights. These mega-events lean on offsets, not aviation reductions. FIFA faces the same problem that other organizers couldn’t easily resolve.
Thus, decarbonization becomes more complex. It also means progress may be slower compared to sectors with more direct control over emissions.
What a Credible Net Zero World Cup Requires
For FIFA’s net-zero goals to be credible, several conditions need to be met.
- Emissions must be clearly measured and reported across all scopes. This includes full disclosure of total emissions before offsets are applied. Transparency is essential for trust.
- There must also be a stronger focus on reducing emissions at source. While offsets can play a role, long-term progress depends on real reductions.
- Independent verification of emissions data can improve credibility. Better coordination of travel and logistics can also help reduce unnecessary emissions.
- In the long term, advances in low-carbon transport, including sustainable aviation fuels, may help reduce travel-related emissions.
Final Whistle: Can FIFA Turn Climate Targets Into Reality?
FIFA has set clear climate targets, including net zero emissions by 2040. These targets reflect growing pressure on global organizations to reduce their environmental impact.
However, the data shows a clear challenge. Most emissions from the World Cup come from indirect sources, especially global travel. Scope 3 emissions dominate the total footprint and remain difficult to control. This makes them the key factor in any net-zero strategy.
As the World Cup continues to grow in scale, emissions challenges will also increase. Operational improvements can reduce part of the impact, but they cannot fully address the larger system.
The future of football’s climate strategy will depend on how this gap is managed. The goal is not only to set targets, but also to achieve measurable and transparent progress in a global, complex system.
In this field, will FIFA lead or lag? We will watch this space closely.
The post FIFA World Cup and the 3.7 Million-Tonne Problem: Can Football’s Biggest Event Reduce Its Climate Impact? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Nature-based carbon investments deserve consideration when they address a specific business dependency and produce outcomes you can measure. Imagine Moonbucks, a global coffee roaster planning next season’s espresso blend. It is considering natural Grade 4 coffee from Jimma, in southwestern Oromia, Ethiopia. Its sourcing decisions affect the roasting schedule and the cash tied up in coffee purchases. Moonbucks needs to understand which measures could protect that supply, what they would cost and how it would judge the results.
1. Define the sourcing problem before choosing a project
Moonbucks needs a dependable component for its espresso blend. Its procurement team wants continuity of volume and an agreed cup profile. Replacing a shipment at short notice could require new sample approval and changes to the blend, and given the schedules for cultivation, processing, and freight delivery, is practically impossible. Moonbucks needs to get this right, and its initial concern is inconsistent deliveries. It commissions an assessment of the supplying farms and post-harvest chain. The questions cover land condition, harvest availability and whether drying or storage problems are affecting saleable lots.
This distinction changes the investment brief. A tree-planting proposal cannot be assumed to fix drying problems. Better storage cannot restore eroded land. The team must establish which problem exists before selecting the response.
CCC’s guide to finding nature-based solutions in your supply chain explains where to look. Here, the next task is to turn a broad concern into a testable proposal.
2. Develop nature-based carbon investments around the actual supply chain
The assessment would trace Moonbucks’ purchases back through the exporter and supplying producer groups. Which farms supply the contracted lots? Who controls land-management decisions? How long does the buyer expect to maintain the purchasing relationship?
Furthermore, Jimma natural Grade 4 cannot be treated as interchangeable with every Ethiopian coffee. Moonbucks would need to test any substitute against its own blend and quality requirements.
Suppose Moonbucks’ assessment identifies an opportunity to maintain shade trees and restore vegetation along exposed streambanks. The IPCC describes agroforestry as a way to store carbon in vegetation and soil, with potential benefits for erosion control and water quality.1 Moonbucks would need local advice on species, growing conditions and maintenance before deciding how these measures fit its sourcing plan.
The proposal now has a defined sourcing connection and a candidate intervention. The next steps are to test its effect on production, assess carbon eligibility and build the financial case.
3. Compare the proposal with other ways to protect supply
WBCSD’s Nature-based Solutions Blueprint recommends comparing nature-based options with other responses across their benefits and costs.2 For Moonbucks, that means evaluating the landscape proposal alongside drying improvements, storage controls and alternative sourcing arrangements.
The product’s natural-process designation matters. Moonbucks should examine the drying and dry-milling chain alongside land conditions. Its team would check storage practices, contamination risks and incoming-lot quality to see whether problems arise before or after the coffee leaves the farms.
The revised proposal might combine land stewardship with separate post-harvest controls. Each component needs its own purpose and budget. A sustainability label should not obscure which activity is expected to solve which problem.
The project develops as the evidence improves. Its scope should follow the diagnosis rather than preserve the first idea unchanged.
4. Establish what the carbon outcome could count toward
Moonbucks’ sustainability team now tests the proposed carbon case separately from the sourcing case. Is the objective a measurable change in Moonbucks’ value-chain emissions, verified credits for separate voluntary use, or distinct outcomes under carefully defined arrangements?
Scope 3 covers value-chain emissions. A purchasing relationship alone does not prove that a farm intervention can be included in Moonbucks’ inventory. The team needs an applicable accounting method, defensible boundaries and evidence supporting attribution.
SBTi’s FLAG Guidance (forest, land and agriculture), version 1.2, says purchased credits used as offsets cannot meet near-term FLAG or energy and industry targets. Eligible land-based removals are subject to accounting requirements.3 Moonbucks needs to test its proposal against those rules before including an outcome in its targets.
For Moonbucks’ Jimma proposal, maintaining existing trees and establishing new vegetation could involve different carbon questions. Specialists must examine the baseline and additionality, meaning what changes because the project proceeds. They must also assess measurement and the risk that stored carbon is lost. CCC’s MRV and additionality article introduces those tests.
Until that work is complete, Moonbucks should not budget an assumed Scope 3 reduction or credit-sale receipt. Direct emissions reductions remain the priority.
5. Build a financial case that survives weaker assumptions
Moonbucks’ finance team would now build a multi-year budget. UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature 2023 compares current finance with the investment needed to meet climate, biodiversity and land-restoration goals.4 The company would cost its proposed activities, farmer participation and ongoing monitoring. Verification, where required, is a separate expense. Maintenance and responsibility for replacing failed plantings must remain visible after the initial establishment budget ends.
Operational benefits need equally careful treatment. If fewer rejected lots reduce emergency purchasing, count that saving once. Do not add “supply resilience” as another financial benefit when it represents the same avoided cost.
Moonbucks should compare a base case with slower benefits, higher implementation costs and no carbon revenue. It should also distinguish production outcomes from quality and shipment outcomes. A single good harvest would not prove that the landscape intervention caused better delivery performance.
A project can remain worth funding even when its carbon case needs more work. That decision must rest on the operational evidence and the company’s objectives, without unsupported environmental claims.
6. Fund a pilot with a clear expansion decision
Moonbucks’ first approval would fund a bounded pilot, rather than commit the entire sourcing program. Before spending, Moonbucks would agree on participating farms, responsibilities and the evidence needed at review.
Its scorecard could track farmer participation, implementation costs and plant survival, alongside accepted coffee volumes and lot-quality results. Carbon measurements would follow the selected method. Farm-level traceability must connect the intervention to the actual sourcing relationship.
Suppose Moonbucks’ review later finds that storage changes explain most quality improvements, while the land measures need longer observation. Those findings would shape the next decision: expand the proven component, adjust the landscape work or pause further spending. They would not justify crediting all improvements to tree planting.
This gives nature-based carbon investments a practical place in a multi-year strategy. Funding increases as the evidence supports it, and the project can change direction before a larger commitment.
Discuss a sourcing opportunity with CCC
Carbon Credit Capital’s nature-based supply-chain investment service uses its Dual-Value Model to examine supply-chain economics alongside potential sustainability outcomes.
Schedule a consultation to discuss your sourcing exposure and the questions to resolve before allocating capital.
Sources
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 7, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses, section 7.4.3.3 (Agroforestry).
- World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Nature-based Solutions Blueprint, 5 June 2024.
- Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), Forest, Land and Agriculture Science-Based Target-Setting Guidance, version 1.2, March 2026, section 3.1.4, pp. 37–38.
- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), State of Finance for Nature 2023, 2023.
A plastic credit funds the collection of plastic waste in places where no formal system exists to collect it. Each credit represents a measured, independently audited quantity of plastic taken out of the environment or returned to use, tracked on a public registry.
EU carbon credit claims changed on 27 September 2026, the day the Directive (EU) 2024/825 began to apply across the European Union. The change is narrow. It changes how a company can talk about the credits it buys. A product can no longer be called neutral on the strength of compensation alone; however, every specific, evidenced statement about what a company measured, reduced, and funded stays fully available.
