“Race to Zero”: Werder Bremen joins UN Initiative

“Race to Zero”: Werder Bremen joins UN Initiative

SV Werder Bremen is stepping up its commitment to climate protection.

The German football club has joined the United Nations (UN) “Sports for Climate Action” initiative and is thus committed to achieving the so-called net zero target by 2040 at the latest as part of the global “Race to zero” campaign. In this case, CO2 emissions are to be halved by 2030.

The UN Race to Zero initiative, launched in 2019, is the world’s largest alliance to achieve net zero, the complete avoidance of CO2 emissions by the middle of the current century to limit global warming to below 2 degrees. “Sports for Climate Action” explicitly targets sports organisations and stakeholders within the UN initiative to support them in achieving the climate targets.

“We all have to do more for climate protection. The signals from our environment are alarming and it is time to take action now. We at Werder Bremen are also not doing enough so far and therefore want to make a clear commitment with this step.”(…)”Our goal is not to suggest a supposed climate neutrality through compensation. We must and want to reduce emissions or prevent them altogether where possible in order to really help the environment. This is a big challenge, but in the end there should be net zero.”

Anne-Kathrin Laufmann, Werder’s CSR Director and Sustainability Manager

In addition to achieving its emissions targets, Werder has also committed to submitting a strategy within one year on how to achieve the reduction, as well as publishing an annual report on its carbon footprint and progress. SV Werder has already been collecting its carbon footprint since 2019, and in 2020 a procedure was developed with the help of scientific support that allows SVW to collect uniform and thus comparable data on an annual basis. The surveys for the 2021 carbon footprint are currently underway and within the framework of the UN initiative, the “pre-Corona year” 2019 will be used as the starting year for the measurement due to its valid values.

“Race to zero calls us to action. The fight against climate change is a race that has long since begun and in which we all have a lot of catching up to do together. We want to fulfil this social responsibility and take fans, partners and the people in the region along with us on the way through our exemplary function as a football club. We are pleased that we can now announce our participation in the ‘Race to zero’ on the occasion of the DFB action match day for more climate protection.”

Dr Hubertus Hess-Grunewald, Werder’s President and CEO

With this signing, Werder follows clubs such as Liverpool FC, Tottenham Hotspur and Bundesliga rival VfL Wolfsburg. UEFA and FIFA have also already signed the UN Declaration of Commitment. In total, more than 1,000 cities, over 5,000 companies and over 1,000 universities have already joined the global “race to zero” campaign, according to UN Climate Change.