Golf fans in the UAE urged to help tackle the climate crisis

Fans heading to the Abu Dhabi Championship and DP World Tour Championship later this year are being urged to play their part in tackling the climate crisis by offsetting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when travelling to and from the Rolex Series events.

The DP World Tour, the organisers of both events, have launched a new tool, in collaboration with AQ Green TeC, a Hamburg based carbon management solutions provider, that allows spectators to input their event travel-related information, including flights, accommodation and ground transportation.

Once the GHG emissions have been calculated, fans can purchase verified carbon credits to offset them.

Carbon credits in the tool are all from Gold Standard accredited projects that support a range of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The tool will also be promoted at tournaments via QR codes across the site and on DP World Tour digital platforms.

Helping spectators mitigate their GHG emissions when travelling to tournaments is an important part of the Tour’s wider Green Drive programme, which is committed to achieving a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero carbon by 2040.

The Tour has just released its first summary Impact Report, following a comprehensive audit of 10 events and its operations and venues in 2023, completed in collaboration with the GEO Sustainable Golf Foundation. The report highlights that spectator travel accounts for an average of 45% of greenhouse gas emissions per tournament - the largest single emissions source.

Since launching their Green Drive initiative two years ago on World Environment Day, the European Tour group has since showcased several sustainable processes in a bid to reach their goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Last year the Dubai Desert Classic became the first Rolex Series event to achieve GEO Certified Tournament status, while last season’s DP World Tour Championship was also the most sustainable to date thanks to a wide range of initiatives, which included the Earth Lounge, a hospitality chalet located on the 16th green, being fully powered by a mixture of solar panels and hydrogen generators, resulting in 100% CO2 Emission reduction.

Maria Grandinetti-Milton, Head of Sustainability at the European Tour group, said: “There will always be unavoidable emissions when staging golf tournaments that attract thousands of fans over multiple days. We have a responsibility to start the dialogue with our fans and to help connect the impact of actions onsite to the future of our sport, supporting climate mitigation projects where we can all work together to invest back into the planet.

“Ultimately, we want to make it easier for fans to make cleaner travel choices in the first place, whether that’s using public transport, carpooling or cycling. At present, 20.5% of our spectator’s travel using lower carbon methods, and we want to increase this percentage. This new tool will help raise awareness of this issue amongst our fan base and provide a simple means of understanding the impact different modes of transport have on our climate. If we are going to achieve net zero by 2040, then everyone needs to pull together and play their part.”

David Grundlingh, CEO of AQ Green TeC, added: “It has been our long-held belief that sport has immense influence and thereby opportunity to drive positive change and deliver #SharedResponsibility and #CollectiveAction for meaningful climate action. We are therefore extremely excited to be making such a significant move into sport with the team at the European Tour group and look forward to showing the rest of the live-event industry how to take their biggest environmenttal challenge, namely fan-travel and turn this into an opportunity for climate change mitigation.”

To help drive engagement with the new tool, the DP World Tour will be running a series of competitions for fans who choose to offset their travel, with once in a lifetime prizes on offer.