Just a few months remain until the start of the football World Cup, Qatar 2022. A tournament that, beyond the results on the pitch, will be remembered for the countless controversies that have marked the build-up. Starting with the decision by the international governing body (Fifa) to award the tournament to a country repeatedly criticised on the front of human rights; and continuing with doubts over the conditions of the foreign workers employed on construction sites and the number of deaths that occurred during the preparatory works. Now a further front is opening, that of environmental impact: the organisers had announced the first carbon-neutral World Cup in history — that is, with net-zero emissions. But, figures in hand, a report by the NGO Carbon Market Watch contests this claim point by point.

The sustainability strategy put in play by the Qatar 2022 World Cup organisers

There will be 32 teams (without Italy, which spectacularly failed to qualify) taking part in the tournament scheduled from 21 November to 18 December. Around 1.5 million fans are expected in Qatar, following matches across eight stadiums, seven of which have been built from scratch. According to Fifa, the event will generate 3.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, taking into account the direct and indirect emissions from accommodation, infrastructure construction and travel.

Together with the host country, for the first time the Federation has developed a sustainability strategy to limit the environmental impact as much as possible: measures range from the purchase of credits to offset emissions to cutting-edge technological solutions to reduce the energy requirements and consumption of the facilities, manage waste as effectively as possible and avoid water wastage. With regard to infrastructure, a decidedly "compact" competition has been organised to minimise the number of air transport journeys: all the World Cup venues are located within a radius of 50 kilometres from the centre of Doha, the capital of Qatar.

The key issues are the future of the stadiums and the quality of the CO2 credits used to offset emissions

And here, according to Carbon Market Watch, a first critical point emerges: Fifa's calculations took into account only the emissions produced by the facilities during the days of the football World Cup, and not over their entire lifecycle; the remaining CO2 footprint will be attributed to future occupants and their use of the venues. Yet there is no certainty about the fate of infrastructure that — as happened, for example, with the World Cup in Brazil — could turn into white elephants.

The city of Doha, which has always used a single stadium, will find itself with as many as eight by the end of the tournament. This is, the NGO's report highlights, "an important problem, because these stadiums were built specifically for the World Cup and the future extensive use of so many facilities in such a limited geographical area is uncertain." The real carbon footprint of this infrastructure — according to Carbon Market Watch — is at least 1.4 million tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of the emissions produced in one year by 180,000 American families through their energy consumption.

To use the words of the report's author, Gilles Dufrasne, the claim of a zero-emissions World Cup is "an incredible claim. Despite the lack of transparency, the evidence suggests that the emissions from this World Cup will be considerably higher than forecast by the organisers, and it is unlikely that the carbon credits purchased to offset these emissions will have a sufficiently positive impact on the climate."

The study also raises the issue of the credits purchased to offset emissions, which are said to be of "low quality," not least because they are calculated on the basis of a standard created specifically for the tournament; moreover, at present only two active projects are recorded, amounting to just over 130,000 credits, against the 1.8 million needed to offset the entire tournament. All things considered, taking into account the stadiums' emissions over their entire lifecycle, the Qatar 2022 tournament will exceed the annual emissions of a country like Iceland by eight times. So much for a carbon-neutral World Cup.