Published

1 year ago

March 27, 2025

Alice Rush

Soccer, also known as football, is the world’s most popular sport, with billions of fans and a vast global reach. While football is the commonly used term in most countries, soccer is widely recognized in regions like North America. Regardless of the name, the sport’s environmental impact remains a major concern, and its carbon footprint is growing.

Recent studies, particularly the New Weather Institute report “Dirty Tackle: The growing carbon footprint of football“, estimate that soccer’s total carbon footprint is around 64-66 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO2e) annually. This is comparable to the annual emissions of Austria and 60% more than those of Uruguay.

Knowing the main causes of soccer’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is key to reducing its impact. So, what are the main culprits of the game’s growing carbon emissions?

The Major Contributors to Soccer’s Carbon Emissions

Here are the top three major sources of the sports’ rising GHG emissions:

CC Football Carbon Footprint March2025_1 (1)

Travel Emissions: The Heavy Cost of Mobility

Soccer matches require significant travel, both for teams and spectators. The reports highlight that spectator travel is the biggest contributor to non-sponsorship emissions. Air and car travel make up the bulk of these emissions, particularly for international competitions.

One Men’s FIFA World Cup match emits 44,000-72,000 tCO2e, equivalent to 31,500 to 51,500 average UK cars driven for a year.
A single English Premier League (EPL) match emits around 1,700 tCO2e, with spectator travel accounting for half of this.
Matches in international club competitions increase emissions by 50% due to air travel.
The FIFA World Cup, including qualification matches, emitted 6.5 million tCO2e over four years.

Expanding tournaments and increasing international matches worsen the problem. The 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will need a lot of air travel. This will greatly raise emissions. The growth of international club competitions, like UEFA’s Champions League and FIFA’s new Club World Cup, makes this problem worse.

football carbon emissions — Source: New Weather Institute

Efforts to promote greener travel among spectators remain insufficient. While some clubs encourage fans to use public transport, overall adoption is low. More teams should step up. They could offer discounted match tickets for fans who use low-carbon transport.

Stadium Construction: Arenas of Pollution

Stadiums cause a lot of carbon emissions. This happens both during their construction and while they are maintained. The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar saw the construction of new stadiums emitting 270,000 tCO2e per stadium. Major clubs continue to renovate or build new stadiums, adding to their carbon footprint.

World Cup Finals stadium emissions

New stadiums for top-tier clubs like Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford resulted in significant emissions.
Clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona have large stadium expansion projects underway, which will further increase emissions.

Moreover, stadium energy use contributes to ongoing emissions. Many stadiums still use non-renewable energy. They have high electricity use on match days. While some clubs have implemented solar panels and LED lighting, these efforts must be expanded across all leagues.

Green Goals: Are Soccer’s Climate Commitments Enough?

Despite these staggering numbers, soccer’s governing bodies have done little to curb its carbon footprint. FIFA and UEFA have pledged to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2040, but their actions seem to contradict these commitments.

FIFA’s continued partnership with Aramco directly undermines its climate promises.
UEFA’s expansion of the Champions League and FIFA’s decision to increase the World Cup to 48 teams in 2026 will only lead to higher emissions.
Top clubs keep signing big deals with airlines and fossil fuel companies. This trend makes carbon-heavy activities seem normal.

Also, overloading players with longer schedules can harm the environment in other ways. Players travel more often, which raises emissions from team transport. Moreover, medical treatments for overworked athletes add an extra environmental burden.

Notably, the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, to be co-hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, further stirs environmental concerns. The tournament will expand to 48 teams. This means more travel and better infrastructure are needed. This leads to higher GHG emissions. Recent developments have further highlighted these concerns.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup Emissions

In March 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a task force to oversee preparations for the event. This task force aims to leverage the World Cup to promote American excellence and attract foreign investment.

However, Trump’s assertion that political and economic tensions with co-host nations Canada and Mexico would “enhance the excitement” of the tournament has raised eyebrows. This view might overlook the urgent environmental issues tied to holding such a big event.

Estimates suggest that the event could generate over 3.6 million tonnes of CO₂. Most emissions come from air travel, stadium construction, and fans getting to games. These exceed the emissions from the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which was one of the most polluting ever.

These changes highlight the need for strong plans to reduce the environmental impact of the 2026 World Cup.

Kicking Off Sustainability: A Playbook for Change

Soccer has the power to lead climate action given its global influence. Here’s how the sport can reduce its environmental impact:

End High-Carbon Sponsorships: Just as tobacco advertising was banned in sports, governing bodies must phase out sponsorships with high-carbon emitters.
Reduce Air Travel: Football clubs and leagues should encourage train and bus travel for domestic matches. Ticketing policies can prioritize local fans to cut travel emissions.
Smaller, Regional Tournaments: FIFA and UEFA should prioritize regional competitions. This change can help cut down on long-haul flights.
Sustainable Stadiums: Clubs should invest in low-carbon stadiums. They can use renewable energy sources like solar panels and LED lighting.
Encourage Low-Carbon Fan Behavior: Clubs can offer incentives for public transport use, cycling, and electric vehicle travel to matches.
Stronger Climate Rules: Football federations need to set sustainability standards for competitions. Clubs must hit carbon reduction goals to take part.
Player-Led Advocacy: Many professional soccer players are already speaking out about climate change. Their influence can drive awareness and push governing bodies toward stronger climate commitments.

Time for Football to Act

Soccer’s carbon footprint is undeniable, but so is its potential to drive climate action. With its unmatched global reach, football can be a powerful force for sustainability. However, without real leadership from FIFA, UEFA, and major clubs, emissions will continue to rise.

The moment to act is now—before climate change threatens the very sport billions love. If football is truly committed to securing its future, it must move beyond words and take real, measurable action to cut emissions across all levels of the game.

READ MORE: The First-Ever Green Superbowl: Powered by 100% Renewable, Carbon-free Energy (CFE)

The post Soccer’s Carbon Footprint: How Dirty Is This Sports? appeared first on Carbon Credits.

Carbon Footprint

Insetting vs Offsetting: Which Actually Counts Toward Your Scope 3 Targets

Published

4 days ago

August 12, 2026

Alice Rush

The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.

The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.

This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.

The two definitions, in plain English

Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.

Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.

The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.

What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says

The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).

For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.

For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.

A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.

When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)

Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:

The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.

The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.

When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.

The procurement and supplier engagement question

Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.

To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.

The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.

Choosing the right tool for the right target

A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.

The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.

If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.

Carbon Footprint

Net zero needs nature: a carbon credit guide

Published

5 days ago

August 11, 2026

Alice Rush

Net zero is often described as a balancing act: cut what you can, account for the rest, and reach zero on the ledger. That framing is useful, but it leaves something out. It treats every tonne of carbon as interchangeable and every route to zero as equally sound, while the science tells a more specific story.

Carbon Footprint

Deforestation in Malawi: causes and solutions

Published

6 days ago

August 10, 2026

Alice Rush

Malawi has lost a striking share of its forests over the past three decades. Woodlands that once covered well over a third of the country now cover less than a quarter, and the pressure on what remains is increasing. Behind those figures sit two practical questions: what is driving the loss, and what reverses it?