Ipswich Town FC's Carbon Neutral Goal

[Tom_Barclay]

Case Study: Ipswich Town Football Club’s Carbon Neutral Goal

The growing necessity to reduce carbon emissions has become increasingly important for the sporting industry. This has been exemplarily demonstrated by Ipswich Town Football Club, which has embraced the environmental friendly challenge with open arms.

The Club’s main sponsor is E.ON, which is the UK’s largest power and gas company. During the close season after the 2005/06 campaign, Ipswich Town were approached over the possibility of putting on a carbon neutral football match, in the hope of promoting energy efficiency. However, Ipswich Town and Main Sponsor, E.ON, both wanted to take this further and decided to launch a project to become the first ever carbon neutral football club.

Working with the people at CRed at the University of East Anglia, who calculated all the statistics over the carbon emitted by Ipswich Town and the necessary steps to be taken, the Club came up with a strategy. The total amount of carbon emissions that the Club produces a year came to 3200 tonnes, giving the Club an offset target to reach.

The Club initially took an introspective approach, looking at what they could do to reduce their own carbon usage. On this subject, Chief Executive Derek Bowden commented that “over the last six months, the Club has worked hard to decrease its own energy consumption with the current figures showing a decrease of 20%, compared to the same period of last year. This has been done through a number of measures, including switching the Club to a green energy tariff, plus ensuring that catering kiosks’ fridges are emptied and turned off between fixtures.”

As shown by the 20% reduction, Ipswich Town’s bid to lessen their carbon output proved to be successful, putting the Club in a stronger position to appeal to their supporters. Therefore, in conjunction with E.ON, they set up a website entitled www.saveyourenergyfortheblues.co.uk, which promotes the Club’s campaign to obtain the pledges of fans to reduce their individual carbon emissions. Through achieving enough pledges, this goes a long way to offsetting the Club’s own carbon footprint.

To provide an extra incentive to gain the campaign’s backing of the supporters, E.ON offered a number of appealing prizes for those who made pledges, ranging from match tickets to energy saving kettles to a training session with Town’s coaching staff. On the website, there is a whole list of energy efficient activities that one can pledge to do, such as installing three energy efficient light bulbs, buying a hybrid car or switching to renewable energy.

The idea of helping the environment and saving money on fuel bills clearly was an attractive one to Ipswich Town followers, as the Club managed to become carbon neutral on 4th May 2007. This achievement was aided by a grand total of 14000 pledges (and rising) from 3000 fans, as well as the collaboration of E.ON, the Defra Climate Challenge Fund, Ipswich Borough Council and CRed. To celebrate the feat, E.ON donated a five figure sum to manager Jim Magilton’s transfer kitty to spend on new players.

The carbon neutral scheme at Ipswich Town has been heralded as a great success; indeed, the Club was shortlisted for both the Daily Telegraph Carbon Trust Awards and the FourFourTwo Football League Best Sponsorship Award. E.ON’s contribution has been one of the key factors in the accomplishment, as has been the commitment of the supporters, underlined by Ipswich Town Captain and Project Ambassador, Jason De Vos: “It has been really inspirational to see the way the fans have embraced the scheme. It is clear that by aligning the energy saving programme with their local football club it gave it more meaning and a focus for the fans”.

The successful outcome of the carbon neutral campaign at Ipswich Town can be heavily linked to the Club’s sway on its supporters. Football clubs and organisations in other sports clearly have a strong bearing on their surrounding communities, and with the ever-increasing significance of climate change, one could argue that these clubs have a responsibility to use their influence for the good of the environment. Ipswich Town have taken on this mantle to excellent effect, and hopefully their success will persuade other sporting organisations to follow suit.

We are always interested in hearing the responses of our members to our articles, so please feel free to post a contribution.