For most of the players competing this week at the Queen’s Club, the grass season will mark a welcome change to the regular tempo of the ATP Tour. With Wimbledon to follow, there will be no rushing to a new city next week in search of points and prize money.
As part of their attempt to address the considerable carbon footprint of its players, on Tuesday the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the governing body of men’s tennis, announced the release of an app, the ATP Carbon Tracker.
The app allows players to track their yearly trips, the distance travelled, and to calculate the amount of carbon their journeys emit. Players will be offered a chance to offset each journey.
“For us, the number one goal is obviously offsetting in the short term but more importantly, in the longer term, a better awareness from the players of the choices they make and the related impact,” said Massimo Calvelli, the ATP’s chief executive officer, in an interview.
Players such as Dominic Thiem, Cameron Norrie, Andrey Rublev and Emil Ruusuvuori have agreed to participate. Thiem believes that climate awareness is rising in the locker room. “I have the feeling that some years ago it was almost no topic. But then it came up,” Thiem has said.
According to the ATP, 90% of the organisation’s carbon footprint comes from travelling. Tennis’s overall carbon footprint, however, is made up of numerous factors including energy, food and waste, particularly at tournaments.
Questions remain about how the sport is tackling and mitigating its carbon consumption. In 2021 the ATP became a signatory of the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, pledging to follow its targets of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and Net Zero by 2040. Various tennis governing bodies, including the four grand slam tournaments, are also signatories.
As part of its official process, all signatories were required to submit annual public reporting of their progress towards carbon reduction. Transparency is an essential pillar in ensuring that organisations remain accountable for the pledges they claim to be following.
Within tennis, such transparency is lacking. In the ATP’s case, the organisation conducted a full carbon audit for the 2019 season, which it says it has used as a baseline to develop a sustainability strategy. In 2022, the organisation also audited its operations. The results of their audits have not yet been made public.
The ATP says that the new player app will provide the organisation with a fuller picture of its emissions through player data and they will be open to greater transparency. “There will be news and pieces of information that we won’t like but it is what it is. I think we need to address this in a transparent way,” said Calvelli.
Of the grand slam tournaments, efforts have been made but without providing a full picture of the carbon reduction process. The Australian Open organisers say they have been tracking greenhouse gas emissions since 2022 and have formulated a reduction plan based on eight emissions sources. Roland Garros has been part of renewable energy and food waste initiatives, while the tournament’s transportation fleet is now 76% electric/hybrid. The US Open’s green initiative programme curiously contains repeated mentions of offsetting and recycled plastic, two contentious issues.
None of the organisations have actually published detailed information on their emissions and the progress of their measures. Meanwhile, there is minimal public information on any carbon reduction initiatives at the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). The WTA has not yet responded to the Guardian’s queries.
Wimbledon, however, has set the tone for carbon accounting by clearly stating its strategies for carbon reduction and breaking down the event’s total annual emissions since 2018, although emissions generated by fan travel are not taken into account. According to Wimbledon’s sustainability chart, the tournament emitted 8,323 tonnes of carbon dioxide last year.
There are 68 tournaments dotted around the globe on the ATP Tour this year. Each event is an individual business. An obvious end goal for the ATP would be to formulate universal carbon reporting standards for its tournaments. “Ultimately where we would like to get is, at the right time, rolling out a set of standards, which every tournament has to comply with from a sustainability standpoint,” said Calvelli.
The ATP says this first version of its app, which has been in the works for some time, primarily stands as an educational tool with the aim of attracting interest from players and changing the culture. Still, how it evolves could present an interesting opportunity to create meaningful change. In a smart appeal to the intensely competitive nature of its athletes, a leaderboard will rank the most carbon friendly players with a $100,000 charity pool distributed between the top three players in the leaderboard at the end of the year.
Each year the ATP distributes bonus pools – this season it totals $21.3m – which players gain access to by filling certain scheduling commitments. Rather than players merely offsetting their travel, a thorny issue for many experts who believe that the primary focus should be on reducing emissions, the ATP could also stress the importance of attempting active measures, such as foregoing private flights in favour of commercial flights, taking trains when feasible and objectively reducing their carbon footprint in other ways. Attaching carbon reduction measures to the bonus pool could provide the players with greater incentives
Despite the outsized emissions from each of its players, tennis still accounts for a miniscule percentage of global emissions. One of the positive roles players can serve is as advocates. “Tennis luckily is a big sport with a lot of attention. I think that we players also can have a good influence on people so we have to kind of balance it out,” said Thiem.
Last year Alexander Zverev became the first player to agree to a carbon audit of his yearly travels. He found that he and his team had travelled more than 500,000 kilometres and were responsible for 250 tons of carbon emissions. However, the positive message of him holding himself accountable was erased by his own lifestyle. Zverev is also endorsed by a private jet company, and he readily advertises his journeys on social media. One of the ATP’s challenges, if they choose, will be to tackle such contradictions and motivate them to lead by example.
