RENEWABLE ENERGY

hen the 2026 FIFA

World Cup kicks off this June, it will not only be the biggest football tournament ever staged, it will, by many metrics, be the single largest organised event in human history.

Its sheer scale is borne out in the numbers. 48 nations, 104 matches, 16 host cities, three countries and millions of miles travelled by attendees.

The scale of the undertaking is vast. And behind every floodlit pitch, every television pixel and every journey to and from a stadium lies one huge question: how on earth do you power something like this?

Lionel Messi of Argentina pictured during the FIFA

World Cup Qatar 2022

The tournament’ s energy statistics Analysts from the SGR estimate the tournament will generate in the region of nine million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in total emissions, making it the most carbon-intensive World Cup in the history of the competition.

That figure is nearly double the historical average for tournaments between 2010 and 2022, and is roughly equivalent to 6.5 million average British cars being driven for an entire year.

This is partly down to the sheer size of this year’ s tournament, which will see 48 teams compete for the first time, up from the 32 that competed in 2022.

That expanded format, which will see fans and players stretched across the US, Canada and Mexico, means that air travel alone will account for a huge proportion of the World Cup’ s carbon footprint.

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