Rovers reveal carbon goal as they join international effort
FOREST Green Rovers have become the first British sports organisation to join some of the world’s biggest businesses in committing to reducing net carbon emissions to zero by 2040.
The Nailsworth-based football club have become one of the latest signatories of The Climate Pledge, an initiative led by Amazon encouraging companies to become carbon neutral 10 years ahead of the agreed date set out by the Paris Climate Agreement.
The deadline is also a decade ahead of the UK Government’s own legally binding target to reduce greenhouse emissions to net zero by 2050.
The League Two club have previously been recognised by the United Nations for a series of renewable energy achievements.
They are powered entirely by wind and solar energy generated by Ecotricity, the company founded by their owner Dale Vince.
And they are set to push ahead with plans to move to a 5,000-capacity wooden stadium.
Rovers are also widely considered to be the first professional football club to offer fans, players and staff an exclusively vegan matchday menu.
Mr Vince said he had been speaking with organisers of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to help them achieve “ambitious plans” for catering at the event to be vegan.
The green energy industrialist said he expected more top-flight football clubs to become more eco-friendly and that the sports industry as a whole had a dual role to play in the fight against climate change.
“Clubs need to bring their own carbon footprint down but the second important thing they have is through their reach and that power of communication that sport has.
“I would say that 10 years ago we were radical in making these changes like taking red meat off the menu, but now it’s fairly normal.
“Chelsea in the Premier League opened up a vegan-only catering stand just before the pandemic hit. I know that Arsenal are interested in using our burgers on matchdays when they get fans back.
“Another League Two club approached us to ask if their players could use our burgers for training food – which is a wonderful testimony to the food and the attitudes of players.”
Mr Vince said he believed that there was a growing consensus among businesses about the need to move onto a more environmentally sustainable footing sooner than 2050.
He cited Jaguar Land Rover’s announcement that it will launch electric models of all of its cars by the end of the decade as an example of this.
Mr Vince, who is hopeful Forest Green can make their operations carbon neutral as early as 2025, said: “We don’t need 30 years; we could do it in 10 or 15, or at least be so far down the road to getting there.
“In Britain today, around 50 per cent of our electricity come from renewable energy sources.
“When Ecotricity began 25 years ago that number was zero.
“The second 50 per cent that we need we could do it in 10 years. The technology is mature and it’s the cheapest form of energy we can make. We’ve got enough resources – we’ve got wind and sun to power the whole country 15 times over and we can create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.”
Mr Vince said that while he expected all regions in the UK to play their own part in the development of the green economy, innovation in the South West’s aerospace and tech sectors meant it was “well placed” to contribute.
“It will depend on our existing industries. If we’ve got aerospace then we will be involved in electric planes, for example. If we had car factories we would be involved in electric cars. It really depends on existing infrastructure,” he said.
“I do think the South West is well placed. Alongside our football stadium we are hoping to build a 4,000-job green tech business park. The South West is a nice place to live. The green economy is going to be techled and some of it could work here very well.” The Green Britain Group, which comprises both Forest Green Rovers and Ecotricity, are among the 20 newly announced companies to sign The Climate Pledge, including US technology corporation IBM and supermarket chain Iceland Foods.