A new study analysing how much CO2 has been burned by Premier League teams on their travels puts Liverpool close to the top of the league, with Everton faring much better. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool FC have been resurgent on the field in the past few years under manager Jurgen Klopp but that success has also led to an increase in the club’s carbon footprint.
In a new study which looked at the volume of CO2 emissions racked up by travel by Premier League teams in the past five years. Liverpool came third behind Manchester United and Arsenal.
In a period when they played in the Champions League every year and reached two finals of the competition, Liverpool racked up 331,124,764g of carbon emissions from coach and air travel, travelling a total of 73,739 miles.
From road travel the Reds used up 54,452,764 of CO2 and from air travel the figure was 276,672,000g. Everton FC fared much better. Despite some overseas matches in the Europa League the club was one of the least travelled teams with just 41,522 road miles under its belt and came eighth in the table.
The Blues used up around 48,056,490g of CO2, 69,782,000g came via road travel and 117,838,490 via air travel. Manchester United’s top spot saw them burn a total of 442,540,647g of CO2, travelling 94,460 miles. Having to fly to Kazakhstan for a Europa League match against FK Astana didn’t help their cause.
The research was carried out by gaming platform SlotsUp. It took a seed list of the top 20 Premier League teams from the end of the 2020/2021 season and analysed each of their away league games (friendlies and charity matches were not included) from their last five seasons.
It measured the distance from one home ground, to another. UK mainland matches were measured using the quickest driving route on GMaps. Overseas matches were measured from the home team’s closest international airport, to the away team’s airport.
For UK mainland matches (road miles), it used the BBC climate change study that stated a coach emits 27g of CO2, per passenger, per KM.