NFL Plants Trees, Buys RECs & Feels Heat

January 31, 2007

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The National Football League is planting 3,000 mangroves and other trees native to Florida in an effort to tackle the the Super Bowl’s greenhouse gas emissions, Reuters reports.

In addition to the tree planting, Sterling Planet announced that it is supplying renewable energy certificates to indirectly offset the game’s emissions associated with conventional electricity consumption at the events. Sterling Planet and the FPL Sunshine Energy program for business customers will provide Florida-generated renewable energy from solar and bioenergy sources in the name of Dolphin Stadium, the NFL and the South Florida Super Bowl XLI Host Committee.

The NFL began planting the trees in August and will finish in May. The NFL claims the trees planted in Miami will make the game “carbon neutral.” That term and tree planting projects in general, have been rejected by many environmentalists.

“It’s probably a nice thing to do, but planting trees is not a quantitative solution to the real problem,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University.

Power for the game and fuel for generators at the adjacent NFL Experience Super Bowl theme park, along with its more than 1,200 vehicles, will emit about 500 tons of CO2 on Super Bowl Sunday, according to the article.

Alex Rau, a principal based in San Francisco at Climate Wedge, which advises a carbon fund for Cheyne Capital, prefers clean energy projects over tree projects. “If your objectives are entirely on the carbon … then it is not so wise a project at the moment,” he told Reuters.

Dell and Ricoh also announced tree planting projects recently.

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