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- Player travel accounts for an average of 35% of GHG emissions per tournament
- Tour wants 90% of members regularly offsetting their travel by 2027
- Forms part of Green Drive initiative
Golf’s DP World Tour is launching a new player travel emissions tracker, which will enable golfers to track, calculate and offset their travel-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across tournaments.
The platform, which the European Tour group has described as a ‘first for professional golf’, will go live at the start of the 2025 DP World Tour season in November.
Built by the tour’s IT department, with support from the GEO Sustainable Golf Foundation, the tracker 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.
While several players have already started offsetting their annual travel in recent years, the platform is aiming for greater take-up across the full tour membership, which totals more than 800 golfers. A target has been set for 90 per cent of players across the DP World Tour, Challenge Tour, Legends Tour and G4D Tour regularly offsetting their tournament travel by 2027.
Four-time major champion Rory McIlroy is among the players that have been offsetting their tournament travel-related GHG emissions.
“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,” said McIlroy.
“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.”
The announcement of the player tracker follows the launch in May of a similar tool enabling spectators to offset their travel and accommodation when attending DP World Tour events.
The two initiatives are part of the tour’s wider ‘Green Drive’ programme, which is working to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero carbon by 2040. The tour’s first impact report, which was released in April, highlighted that player travel accounts for an average of 35 per cent of GHG emissions per tournament.
“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,” said Maria Grandinetti-Milton, head of sustainability at the European Tour group.
“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.”
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