The Champions league is coming home.
But only after a trip to Madrid.
With Liverpool and Tottenham through to the final the best place to play the final is obviously in Spain.
UEFA are staring an opportunity to make a statement on Climate Change in the face like an open goal, and they will predicatably go ahead and skew it wide off their shins by going ahead with the unnecessary financial and carbon cost of playing the match in the Spanish Capital.
So if they chose Villa park instead, what would be the carbon saving?
Using the calculator at Carbon Footprint we can find out.
Assuming that 20,000 people fly from Liverpool to Madrid and another 20,000 from London, with the rest of the attendees hangers on from the locality, the carbon cost works out as
9,000 tonnes of CO2e
However it is widely recognised that airborne emissions have a greater effect and that a multiplier should be used. 1.9 is used here.
Giving a carbon cost of 17,100 tonnes
The cost of the two sides driving (individually in a 2005 Ford Focus 1.6 litre), all the way to Villa Park and back with no car-shares (97.5 miles and 125 miles respectively)
3600 tonnes of Co2e
It would be a saving of 7074 tonnes
Therefore the actual saving is 13,500 tonnes
Or the average annual emissions of 2076 UK residents (6.5 tonnes each)