Regulator Says FIFA Made Misleading Claims Over ‘Carbon-Neutral’ World Cup

When Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup, tournament organiser and football governing body FIFA said that tournament would be carbon-neutral.

Many were skeptical. And now a Swiss regulator has said its carbon-neutral claim was misleading. 

The Commission for Loyalty, which regulates advertising in Switzerland, where FIFA is based, said the organisation made claims about the tournament that could not be proven, the Guardian reported. It also used carbon offsetting methods that did not comply to Swiss standards. 

“In the view of the chamber, the question of whether the promised compensation is truly realistic remains unclear,” the commission’s verdict said. 

“Even though [FIFA] repeatedly hints that it will fully offset the emissions to be definitively calculated at a later date, it is unable to provide proof that the estimated emissions have been offset. In addition, it is unclear whether it’s offsetting measures comply with Swiss standards.”

Bisnow reported on FIFA’s claims about carbon-neutrality in the run-up to the tournament. 

“Yes, it’s greenwashing,” Carbon Market Watch Global Carbon Markets Lead Gilles Dufrasne told Bisnow.

On the eve of the tournament, FIFA and Qatar had bought just 200,000 of the 3.6 million carbon credits needed to offset emissions for the tournament, Carbon Market Watch said. And the emissions they bought are low quality in that they are payments used to fund carbon reduction projects that likely would have happened anyway, a common problem in the murky world of carbon offsetting.

Carbon Market Watch also criticised the way FIFA and Qatar calculated the amount of carbon the tournament would produce. Their figure was 3.6 million metric tonnes of carbon, when taking into account factors like building stadiums and infrastructure, and fans travelling to the country and between games.

But Carbon Market Watch said the figure is actually well above 5 million metric tonnes.

When calculating the amount of carbon created by stadium construction, Qatar and FIFA apportioned only a tiny sliver of the carbon emitted to the World Cup, explaining the stadiums would be regularly used in the decades to come. Since the World Cup only lasts two months out of the next 60 years, they said, only 0.002% of the carbon emitted by construction should go on the World Cup’s ledger.

That is “misleading,” Dufrasne said, since the stadiums were constructed for the tournament and how much they will be used in future is in doubt, especially in a country with a population of just 3 million people. 

FIFA said it might appeal the ruling, the Guardian reported.

“FIFA is fully aware that climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time and believes it requires each of us to take immediate and sustainable climate action,” it said in a statement. 

“FIFA is also fully aware of the impacts that mega-events have on the economy, the natural environment and on people and communities, and has been making substantial efforts to tackle those impacts and, at the same time, to use opportunities to maximise the positive effects of its most iconic tournament, including Qatar 2022. It remains committed to continuously improve its approaches in collaboration with key stakeholders.”