Lions leave small paw print at Grey Cup

Carbon-management company says appearance by local team in CFL final on Sunday helps environment

By Brian Morton, Vancouver Sun

The B.C. Lions have not only made it to this year’s Grey Cup; their victory Sunday also means the event will be a little easier on the environment.

Vancouver-based carbon-offset company Offsetters Clean Technology Inc. says that because B.C. and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are squaring off in next Sunday’s 99th Grey Cup at BC Place Stadium, emissions will be lower than they might have been.

“B.C. and Winnipeg will not only be a great football game, but it will also mean lighter emissions,” Kari Grist, Offsetters’ senior vice-president of marketing and client engagement, said in an interview Monday. “If it [had been] an Edmonton-Hamilton game, it would have been a more intensive [carbon] footprint.”

Grist said that if Hamilton had beaten Winnipeg in the eastern final, the team would have had to travel considerably further to Vancouver, while an Edmonton victory in the western final would have meant a second team making the trip to the west coast.

With the Lions playing on home turf against Winnipeg, emissions will be kept to a minimum.

“Vancouver’s ranked the greenest city in Canada, so it’s fitting that the [Canadian Football League] would want to host a climate-friendly event,” Grist added. “Travel is 90 per cent of the emissions.”

For the second year in a row and as part of the CFL’s Green Drive program — an initiative developed in 2007 to minimize the environmental impacts created by the Grey Cup — Offsetters is working closely with the league to measure and offset emissions generated by the game.

Offsetters said a number of factors are examined to calculate the event’s carbon footprint, including the emissions produced by heating and electricity for BC Place on game day, and the carbon footprint from travel by CFL teams, executives, staff and officials.

Grist’s preliminary estimate is that this year’s game will have a carbon footprint of about 200 tonnes, higher than last year’s 177 tonnes but 78 tonnes less than a Hamilton-Winnipeg final.

Although B.C.’s electrical grid also has lower emissions than Alberta’s, the overall numbers are slightly higher because each team has 85 people this year compared to just 60 last year, and air travel is the most significant factor in higher emissions.

This year, with the BC Lions playing a home game, no air travel is required, representing a savings of 28 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent if Edmonton had won the western final.

Similarly, if Hamilton had won the eastern final, the carbon footprint would have been 50 tonnes larger than the emissions created by the Winnipeg contingent travelling to Vancouver.