“FIS celebrates the second season as a climate-positive sport”. This is the headline of a press release in November 2022. In it, the World Ski Association writes that it supports a project in Peru to conserve rainforest. As a result, more CO2 is filtered out of the air than the FIS causes through its worldwide activities, according to the association. However, a new study by Greenpeace shows that the CO2 footprint of the FIS is significantly larger than the association itself states.
Although the FIS has claimed to be “climate positive” since October 2021, the association has not presented a calculation of how many climate-damaging CO2 emissions are caused by FIS activities for a year and a half.
The CO2 footprint is said to be almost 58,000 tons of CO2, as much as around 5400 Germans cause on average per year.
Almost half of these emissions are said to be caused by the travel of participants in the competitions. 39% of the emissions are said to be caused by the arrival and departure of fans. This proportion is higher in many other sports, for example in the Bundesliga.
Alpine skiing events account for the largest share of emissions, followed by ski jumping competitions.
“In many respects, we could not understand how this data came about and how the FIS came up with the CO2 emissions given here,” criticizes Ursula Bittner from Greenpeace Austria. The nature conservation association did the calculations itself together with the agency “Mission Zero – Climate Partners”.
The FIS claims, for example, that all alpine skiing events cause a total of almost 13,000 tons of CO2. However, Greenpeace’s calculation comes to the conclusion that the four major Alpine Ski World Cups in Kitzbühl, Schladming, Adelboden and Sölden alone cause almost 11,000 tons of CO2.
Greenpeace does not consider it plausible that the remaining World Cups and the hundreds of smaller competitions only cause around 2,000 tons of CO2. Bittner therefore comes to the conclusion that the FIS has massively reduced its carbon footprint.
On the one hand, the summary lacks a lot of information that actually belongs to a complete CO2 balance, for example the overnight stays and meals of the athletes, the waste and the energy requirements for the preparation of the slopes.
However, the most serious shortcomings are in the calculation of the CO2 emissions caused by the travel activity related to the ski events.
Based on the number of spectators and discussions with the organizers, Greenpeace assumes that many fans will travel further than the FIS assumes.
But the FIS also counts the emissions caused by the travel of the competition participants as small. Because the association assumes that the athletes never use the plane for competitions all over Europe.
“That’s just not true,” says Stefan Schwarzbach from DSV.
He assumes that around 30% of trips within Europe are made by plane. It is fitting that the FIS refers to charter flights in various invitations to competitions in Norway, Finland or Russia, some of which were even booked through the travel agency of the world association.
There is also a video on the FIS YouTube channel that shows part of the ski jumping convoy flying from Munich to Yekatarinburg in Russia in October 2021.
When asked how this fits in with the statements in the CO2 balance sheet, the FIS did not answer, as it did to all other questions.
Greenpeace, like the DSV and the signers of the open letter, are demanding that the World Cup calendar be adjusted. The alpine skiing season in particular should start later and there should only be one flight from Europe to North America – last season the men flew across the Atlantic twice.
“That’s our Achilles’ heel,” said DSV board member Schwarzbach. “And we have to stand by that and we have to tackle that in the near future and try to solve it in such a way that it can be implemented and supported in the overall concept.”
Bittner also demands that the FIS submit a “plausible and transparent climate report”. The association should also stop advertising with the term “climate positive”. “This is very dangerous because it conveys to consumers that everything is under control and that something is being done about the climate crisis,” said Bittner. “In fact, nothing is being done. And that is fundamentally the danger of greenwashing.”
But the FIS probably has other plans: President Johann Eliasch has repeatedly announced in the past that he wants to conquer new markets outside of Europe.