The European Tour group is launching a new tool that will allow its players to calculate and offset their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when travelling to and from tournaments – a first for professional golf.
The easy-to-use tool will allow players to input their event related flight information and then purchase verified carbon credits to offset their calculated GHG emissions. Carbon credits in the tool are all from Gold Standard accredited projects that support a range of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The platform will go live at the start of the 2025 DP World Tour season in November. It has been built in-house by the Tour’s IT department, with support from the GEO Sustainable Golf Foundation who have recommended travel related emissions factors and guidance based on a methodology aligned to global frameworks and refined over several years.
Several players have already taken the initiative of offsetting their annual travel in recent years. This new tool will encourage greater take-up across the full 800+ membership, with a target set for 90% of players across the DP World Tour, Challenge Tour, Legends Tour and G4D Tour regularly offsetting their tournament travel by 2027.
Five-time Race to Dubai Champion Rory McIlroy has been offsetting his tournament travel related GHG emissions for the past four years. He said: “As golfers we have the opportunity to travel all over the world doing the job we love, but I do have a conscience about the impact that can have on the environment, and that’s why I began taking steps a few years ago to offset my carbon footprint and make my travel neutral. I think we can all play our part in some way or another, and it’s great to see the DP World Tour launching this new tool to help and encourage members to track and offset their travel.”
Today’s announcement follows on from the launch in May of a similar initiative aimed at DP World Tour ticket holders, with fans now able to offset their travel and accommodation when attending DP World Tour events.
Helping players 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. In April the Tour released its first summary Impact Report, following a comprehensive audit of 10 events and its operations and venues in 2023. The report highlights that player travel accounts for an average of 35% of greenhouse gas emissions per tournament.
A range of other travel and transport initiatives are already in place and being expanded to encourage lower carbon transport options, including rolling out electric courtesy cars at events such as the BMW PGA Championship and Genesis Scottish Open. In addition, the new-look season for 2024 has seen tournaments clustered together into regional “Swings” that are helping to shorten flight times between events.
Maria Grandinetti-Milton, Head of Sustainability at the European Tour group, said: “We are golf’s global Tour, playing 44 tournaments in 24 countries this season, which inevitably creates a large and currently unavoidable travel carbon footprint. We are doubling down on efforts to help mitigate these emissions, and to complement this by offsetting our unavoidable emissions in Gold Standard accredited climate projects, which deliver measurable climate and community benefits linked to important principles of global climate justice.
“Professional athletes are busy people and are laser focused on their performance on the golf course. We have made sure this new tool is easy to use and is supported by an awareness programme that is emphasising its importance to our members and their teams. If we are going to achieve net zero by 2040, then everyone needs to pull together and play their part.”
Through its strategic collaboration with the GEO Sustainable Golf Foundation, the DP World Tour undertakes a wide range of measures to make its tournaments and operations as sustainable as possible. These are centred on resource efficiency; climate action; community engagement and the promotion of nature. As well as offsetting, the overall approach to climate mitigation includes onset investments to drive awareness, support and carbon reduction across the sport, and an increasing emphasis on local community-based ecosystem restoration projects at individual events.