The GAA claims that Croke Park will be carbon neutral by the end of next season, but is this just hot air from the organisation?, writes Fiona McCann
LAST YEAR'S Live Earth concerts around the world were aimed specifically at minimising carbon emissions, yet despite their best endeavours still managed to produce some 19,708 tonnes of carbon emissions.
Mass events have their cost, with massive energy required to power stages and lights, and landfills of waste produced by hungry and thirsty attenders - and the biggest offender being the environmental impact of the hundreds of thousands travelling to such events.
So, how realistic is Croke Park's target that, despite hosting over two million visitors a year between tours, concerts and matches, Croke Park aims to be completely carbon neutral by the final of the GAA Championships next year?
Carbon neutrality may seem to imply a mathematical impossibility: how can a 82,000-capacity stadium reduce its carbon impact to zero? Yet the GAA, in conjunction with ESB, has come up with a plan to redress the carbon balance sheet in its favour.
Through www.culgreen.ie, a new website launched last Thursday, it sets out to harness the GAA's greatest resource - its myriad members and fans. The idea is that fans will reduce their individual emissions by making changes in their homes and businesses, and then donate their "savings" to the Croke Park initiative. Fans can opt to pledge what they save from turning off lights not in use, which cuts back on 145kg of CO2 according to the website, or taking a bus to Croke Park instead of driving, which saves 15kg, in order to compensate for Croke Park's carbon output.
As an added incentive, those who make such pledges are entered into a monthly prize draw, with August's winner taking home tickets to the All-Ireland football final on September 21st.
With Croke Park producing 4,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, it would seem to require turning off a lot of lights, but the GAA is determined that the scheme, in conjunction with other initiatives to accelerate the process of reducing emissions, will have an impact. Yet isn't this just more carbon offsetting, a conscience-salving approach that has been criticised by environmental groups as a means of passing the buck rather than tackling the real problem of emissions?
"We're not big fans of carbon offsetting," admits Oisín Coghlan, director of Friends of the Earth Ireland. "It can be seen as a get-out clause. Ultimately, we have to reduce our footprint so the idea that we can buy offsets is a bad habit to get into."
What Croke Park has in mind, however, is carbon offsetting with a difference. Rather than agreeing to buy carbon credits from companies that claim to plant trees or invest in renewable energy, the GAA is instead encouraging those who utilise the stadium to reduce emissions elsewhere in their own lives as compensation for the inevitable environmental effects of the events they attend.
"Getting out of bed, having a shower, turning on the lights, everything we do has a carbon footprint," says Coghlan. "So it's not possible to hold any event without there being pollution."
What the GAA is doing, in effect, is making people aware of that and finding ways to redress the balance in other areas. Because, despite, the huge environmental impact of such large events, even environmentalists would be reluctant to get rid of them altogether.
"I happen to think that, as a society, we value and should value highly, things like rock concerts and sporting occasions because they are part of the cultural glue that binds us together," adds Coghlan. "As a society we're likely to say, 'Even if we have to cut our pollution by 80 per cent, I hope we make the cuts elsewhere'."
In a sense, he says, this is the kind of philosophy of Cúl Green which, among other things, encourages GAA fans to use public transport.
"There's a greater human value to concerts and sporting occasions than there is to traffic jams," says Coghlan. "I'd rather eliminate traffic jams than eliminate concerts and sporting events."
Yet, rock concerts have come in for their share of criticism for their environmental impact - caused in particular by the thousands of fans who travel to attend them.
Such was his disillusionment with the levels of energy consumption at rock concerts, that Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke even threatened to quit touring altogether back in October 2006. To the relief of the band's fans, he didn't follow through with the threat, but his words went some way towards highlighting the issue of carbon emissions when it comes to such mass events.
As awareness grew, festivals began to take the concerns on board, with this year's Oxegen festival claiming carbon neutrality, the assertion based on their investment in renewable energy initiatives.
Yet the Croke Park initiative is less about this kind of offsetting, a practice that has come under fire from those who believe the aim should be to stop producing waste or draining resources in the first place, and more about raising awareness using one of the country's biggest brands, the GAA.
It was the stadium's iconic status that convinced the ESB, with whom the initiative was developed, that Croke Park was the place to begin. "Croke Park is an icon in Ireland and has a special place in everybody's hearts and minds," says ESB chief executive Padraig McManus. "That's why we felt there could be a statement made. If you could do it in Corke Park, then it would be a model for the rest of the country."
As counter-intuitive as it might seem for a company that sells electricity to be encouraging people to use less, part of the ESB's mandate from the government involves encouraging energy-awareness among its customers.
The Croke Park initiative, then, is less about the stadium toeing the environmental line and more about raising awareness around the country using an organisation that already reaches out to local communities everywhere.
"We happen to be an organisation that has influence in communities," acknowledges GAA president Nickey Brennan, who points to the value of utilising the GAA brand to educate people on environmental issues.
"Well over two million people come to the stadium every year. That's an audience that we can start getting the message across to."
It's an advantage environmentalists such as Coghlan are quick to acknowledge. "They have a huge reach," he admits of the GAA. "It's much greater than Friends of the Earth."
Cúl Green even goes so far as to pit county against county in true GAA style, offering a €20,000 grant to fund sporting equipment for juvenile clubs in the county that makes the most carbon-saving pledges per head of population. With detailed information on how carbon savings can be made, it's the kind of message that environmentalists see as essential if climate change is to be slowed.
"At the moment everyone in Ireland is responsible for 17 tonnes of greenhouse gases per person in a year," explains Coghlan. "We have to get down to two tonnes per person by 2050 in order to do our fair share to prevent runaway climate change."
Cúl Green, whatever its stated aims, is at least an attempt at bringing this about.
"Whether it will make the GAA carbon neutral, I don't know," says Coghlan, "but to the extent that it encourages people, mobilises them to reduce their pollution, it's very welcome."
The notion that high-impact events can suddenly delete their environmental effect may be questionable, but while the Croke Park plan to calculate the carbon offsets of GAA fans and pit them against its own initiatives may provide a considerable mathematical challenge, it can encourage change among its members and fans.
The monitoring of their pledges to walk to work or half-fill the kettle may be difficult, but Friends of the Earth still sees its benefits.
"If it encourages people to think about their own carbon footprint and reduce their pollution, that's fantastic," admits Coghlan. "It may be even more powerful than the Government campaign to do so."
Brennan has no illusions. "This is not going to change the world," he admits of the new initiative. "We know that. But I think we can certainly make a difference."
www.culgreen.ie