We all love football and most of us have been watching the FIFA World Cup taking place in Qatar. But what about the planet? FIFA acknowledges that the Earth’s climate is changing due to human activity. But, as pointed out by Wired, FIFA’s efforts to reduce the huge carbon footprint of 3.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, have failed according to a number of experts.
However this high-carbon event is dwarfed by the emissions that will be released if the country fully exploits its oil and gas fields. It is estimated that these giant ‘Carbon bombs’ will add 50 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. To raise some awareness of the Carbon Bombs issue we thought it would be useful to show the actual volume of that gas, as giant footballs. Our belief is that we can both enjoy the spectacle of national football AND strive to create a green, renewably powered planet for our children.
More information on this from BankTrack here.
High resolution images are available in this Flickr album: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAikp6
Notes
Fossil gas is only required in the short term as a transition energy source as the world switches to properly insulated buildings and renewables like wind and solar backed up by large-scale battery storage.
A Carbon Bomb is a coal, oil or gas project that can cause over a gigatonne of CO₂ emissions during its lifetime. That's a billion tonnes – more than twice the UK's annual emissions from a single project.
FIFA estimate of CO₂ emissions: qatar2022.qa/sites/default/files/2022-08/greenhouse-gas-accounting-report-en.pdf
Potential emissions estimates: Kühne et al, 2022 “Carbon Bombs” - Mapping key fossil fuel projects doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112950
Analysis of 1.5 °C compatible scenarios from the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C shows unabated use of natural gas in primary energy supply globally should already have peaked and be declining globally, and that it needs to drop by more than 30% below 2020 levels by 2030, and 65% below 2020 levels by 2040 (https://climateanalytics.org/media/gas_is_new_coal_nov_2021.pdf
Data is from Bank Track