South Africa’s Soaring Emissions During The 2010 World Cup

Friday, 23 October 2009 06:00

South Africa’s Soaring Emissions During The 2010 World Cup Next year’s world cup is set to cause carbon emissions to soar above the bench mark set by Germany in 2006 for the host country South Africa.

Since the early 1990’s large sports events like the Olympics and World Cup have been designed to minimise the impact on the environment as they are known to accelerate global warming due to the extra emissions caused during the event.

"The FIFA 2010 World Cup will have the largest carbon footprint of any major event with a goal to be climate neutral," South Africa's Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica told Reuters in response to emailed questions.

She said the estimated carbon footprint of Africa's first soccer World Cup is 896 661 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), with an additional 1,856,589 tCO2e contributed by international travel.

The fact that South Africa is a long haul destination means that 67% of the country's total carbon emissions during the one-month event next year is due to air travel.

"This footprint is almost ten times the footprint of the 2006 FIFA World Cup hosted in Germany," Sonjica said, adding Germany did not include air travel in its estimates four years ago.

Germany’s FIFA World Cup was the first of its kind in the fact that it had an environmental management aspect which is now known as “GREEN GOAL”. The aim being a carbon neutral event targeting areas such as water, refuse, energy and mobility.

Germany urged people to use public transport and designed the stadiums to use energy saving lights, pumps and ventilators. Similar plans have been set out in South Africa’s ten hosting stadiums, such as Johannesburg who will feature water-free urinals and low-volume flush toilets, while Cape Town has explored augmenting its energy from a wind farm.

But it is the high carbon emissions associated with air travel South Africa was keen to tackle, Sonjica said.

"The department has opted to place much effort in offsetting this 67% through the establishment of a web-based system for offsetting emissions," she said, without giving details.

Sonjica said no specific projects have been identified so far, and new projects were likely to be implemented after 2010.

With the help of the United Nations Development Programme South Africa are looking at potential carbon offset projects but this was still at its infancy stage.

"We have not yet ventured into the calculation, verification and/or trade of carbon credits," Sonjica said.

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