19 Dec 2022
The past 12 months have delivered significant advances across sustainable golf tools and programs to help measure, track and report sustainability indicators across the sport.
The new OnCourse® Tournaments program, developed with funding support from Dow, provides an easy-to-use sustainability and climate action program made by people who understand golf, purpose built to help integrate sustainability into, and through, a golf tournament.
Whether the event is one of the world’s largest or smallest, professional or amateur, and whether starting out or aiming to be more ambitious, OnCourse® provides all you need.
For clubs and facilities already using the OnCourse® Facilities program, new and enhanced Sustainable Golf Scorecards including carbon reports have been rolled out.
Each scorecard incudes Annual Data Insights, comprising key Sustainable Golf Metrics, based on the information provided in OnCourse with a review taking into account your climate, type and size of course and other factors to provide observations on possible areas of improvement or areas to be celebrated and more widely communicated.
The Carbon Report calculates carbon emissions and sequestration, drawn from the data provided in OnCourse, combined with internationally endorsed algorithms with regional customisations for items like the national grid, combined with practical suggestions for reducing emissions and increasing sequestration to improve carbon footprints year on year.
Measuring, tracking and reducing emissions is a challenge facing many sports, events and organizations and has quickly become an important consideration for golf clubs and courses, associations, tournaments, tours, players and sponsors.
And as more parts of golf commit to a pathway to net zero with targets to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, it is time to begin to measure carbon emissions and pursue ways to manage and reduce.
Four years of collaborative and scientific-based work have brought forward significant steps to demystify the process and bring climate action into the suite of credible and practical solutions provided for the golf industry, from GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf in partnership with dozens of golf and sustainability NGOs and experts around the world.
GEO Foundation put together a guide for looking at carbon footprinting for temporary events in new way that better represents the staging of temporary events, developing a “core” and “advanced” GHG footprint model for temporary events.
Similarly lowering carbon of developments is another key area of focus, and work includes identifying the ‘key emitters’ that are, more often than not, the areas at the heart of creating a low carbon development hinge - earthworks volumes, bulk material sourcing, site arrangement, drainage and irrigation designs, and overall energy water demand.
Simple carbon footprinting is now part of the OnCourse® programme, giving you an easy way to measure, calculate, track and credibly mitigate carbon emissions. It’s easy to get started.
