Euro 2024: How is Uefa trying to make tournament in Germany more sustainable? – BBC Sport

“The most sustainable European Championship of all time.”

It is a big statement, but that is Uefa’s aim for this summer’s tournament in Germany.

To be the “most sustainable” is, of course, difficult to quantify, with many factors involved. It is also hard to make comparisons because of the historical growth of the tournament.

But, however Uefa defines it, European football’s governing body and German football are making big strides to reduce the impact of Euro 2024

Sustainability has been an integral part of Euro 2024 since the 2018 bidding process, with its strategy focusing on environmental, social and governance pillars.

“There are two aspects when it comes to environmentally sustainable sporting events,” said Dr Hartmut Stahl, who was part of a feasibility study into how to minimise the tournament’s environmental impact.

“In one aspect, you want to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. But the other aspect is making people aware of sustainability. Football is, in Europe at least, one of the most popular sports, and therefore it’s a good way to increase awareness.”

The strategy has been backed with the investment of 32m euros (£27m), about 5% of the Uefa tournament budget, with initiatives including:

Euro 2024 is set to create significantly fewer carbon emissions than the World Cup in Qatar – about 490,000 tonnes compared with an estimated 3.63 billion two years ago.

About 80%, according to the study, is expected to be generated by fan travel, and organisers have started a ‘climate fund’ to invest in efforts to make German football more sustainable.

Through it, 25 euros (£21) per tonne of unavoidable carbon produced will be given to German amateur clubs’ environmental reduction projects – estimated to be worth 7m euros (£5.9m).

“Nowadays everything tries to be labelled ‘climate neutral’, including football matches and tournaments,” said Dr Stahl, who added that the fund was a “really good decision”.

Uefa’s idea is that by investing in “projects that will mitigate CO2 emissions over the long term” instead of traditional carbon offsetting methods, it can help strengthen Euro 2024’s “legacy” environmentally and within the German football community.

When it comes to major tournament sustainability, travel is a clear issue.

Uefa has attempted to mitigate this by clustering fixtures in regions, but the team bases have added complexity.

Despite England’s three group games being in the west, their camp is more than 250 miles away in the east.

They were criticised by the Campaign for Better Transport for flying to Germany.

Scotland, who kick off the tournament in Munich on 14 June, are based in the south and could face a 12-hour round trip to their second game in Cologne.

Teams have been discouraged from taking domestic flights, but there are questions around the extent to which that will be enforced.

German football, like Germany itself, has been one of the leaders in sustainability, something that has aided Uefa’s drive for a more sustainable tournament.

In 2020 the German Football Association (DFB) became the first national football body to adopt the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Sports for Climate Action Framework.

The following year the German Football League (DFL) announced that the Bundesliga’s first and second divisions would be the first major professional football leagues to include mandatory sustainability criteria in their licensing regulations.

“We really see sustainability as a broader holistic framework,” DFL head of sustainability Marika Bernhard told BBC Sport. “We see it not only as an obligation but a responsibility.

“The tool of club licensing is really important because, although it is unsexy to go the regulatory approach, it’s really key to getting forward.”

Among the 36 clubs, Mainz say they have been carbon neutral since 2010, Freiburg built the country’s first solar-powered football ground and Wolfsburg topped the 2023 Sport Positive League.

For others, there is still work to be done and there are only certain criteria in the licensing regulations that will result in sanctions. The DFL says this will increase in the coming years.

“From the beginning we could really build on great support of a large number of clubs,” said Bernhard.

“We reach millions of people through football. Studies show that players, clubs, leagues can really foster a behavioural change towards sustainability through education – provided that football also does its homework.”

BBC editorial sustainability lead David Lockwood

Uefa has not defined its “most sustainable” Euros claim.

In terms of pure emissions, though, it cannot be because of the historic growth of the tournament. The first European Championship had only four teams in the finals, with few travelling fans.

It was not until 1980 that the tournament was expanded to eight teams, then 16 in 1996 through to 2016, when it grew to 24.

With that expansion comes more fans and more emissions. There will be a record 2.7 million tickets available this year.

Uefa, like Fifa, does not factor qualifying into the footprint of its summer tournaments. Qualifying for the Euros has expanded from 17 teams in the first tournament to 54 teams now playing 239 fixtures, watched by an estimated five million fans.

Deutsche Bahn (German Rail Network) is one of the Euro 2024 sponsors and there is subsidised national rail travel for fans to counter the allure and convenience of cheap subsidised plane journeys.

This is a modern phenomenon, though. When making the claim “most sustainable ever”, we have to consider that in the majority of previous tournaments more fans would likely have been local and rail would likely have been the dominant mode of transport for travelling fans.

The clustering of games to make team travel by train easier is a positive step but the location of training bases selected by individual associations, combined with kick-off times, means we may not see as many players taking the train as we could have otherwise.

While it is very hard to endorse the claim that it is “the most sustainable tournament ever”, there is no doubt that the environmental impact is front and centre like never before at Euro 2024, which can only be a good thing.

Germany is already seeing the impact of a changing climate.

The picture is complex, with different factors influencing weather patterns and cycles, but there are visible trends.

Last year was the hottest on record both globally (with an average temperature of 14.98C – about 1.48C warmer than the long-term average post industrial levels) and in Germany (10.6C).

There were unprecedented heatwaves in Europe that a scientific study said would have been “virtually impossible” had it not been for climate change.

“We’re now seeing an increasing number of heat events linked to rising temperatures,” said BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath.

“Europe was particularly badly hit in 2023, enduring the warmest summer on record, with heatwaves and flooding hitting many parts.”

Alongside increased temperatures, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and Germany has experienced a general rise in precipitation.

In July 2021 floods killed more than 180 people, and research suggested flooding was made up to nine times more likely by the climate crisis.

“The likelihood is Europe will see an uptick in the number of extreme weather events like storms and heatwaves,” said McGrath. “It is the fastest warming continent, heating up at nearly twice the global average.”

In terms of sustainability of tournaments, when it comes the future, it is hard to see beyond expansion.

Euro 2028 will take place across the UK and Ireland, where public transport infrastructure often comes under scrutiny.

The 2026 World Cup is spread across North America, Euro 2032 will be hosted by Italy and Turkey, and the 2030 World Cup takes place on three different continents.

Newly expanded Uefa club competitions are projected to lead to almost two billion air miles from fan and team travel, and a resulting 480,000 tonnes of carbon.

“It’s important that organisers of these events realise sustainability planning is part of organising a sporting event,” said Dr Stahl.

Bernhard said: “It’s time to act. We really need to fight for the pieces of our existence and the future of our next generations.”