SUNDERLAND AFC’S ambitious net-zero targets announced earlier this year are about making money rather than spending it, says the club’s chief operating officer Steve Davison.

And the senior Sunderland official insists that while the goals of halting global warming and helping mitigate the climate emergency are vital, the club is very much aware of the business benefits of the moves.

“In many ways, this has been a purely business decision for us as a club,” he said.

"We are focused on money first and the prime driver is financial, making us more sustainable as a business, because the reality is it makes perfect business sense to do this.

“Once you look at the long-term savings you can make with the investments in renewables and sustainability, the question becomes not why would you do this, but why wouldn’t you do this?”

The club has confidently committed to becoming carbon neutral, or net-zero, by 2040 - a full 10 years earlier than the deadline widely recognised as needed to be met to stop global warming from rising above 1.5C.

And before then, the club has set itself a target of becoming energy self-sufficient by 2028.

Only a handful of clubs have outlined net-zero targets and Sunderland AFC wants to be the first in football to reach the United Nations' targets of halving emissions by 2030 and being net-zero by 2040.

A key part of achieving that is a proposal for a 40mW solar farm at the Academy of Light for which the club are preparing a planning application and applying for a grid connection in the very near future.

If successful, this will feed clean renewable electricity into the UK network and help generate revenue for the club while contributing to its carbon-neutral targets.

It will probably be the most high-profile of a string of environmentally-friendly initiatives being rolled out by the club which it has already started to implement.

Steve said: “People should expect us to be making progress on our goals in the near and medium term, as well as the long-term and we’re hoping to make to move this process forward further quickly.”

Club owner, Kiril Louis-Dreyfus, is completely on board with the plans, and Steve revealed: “Kiril is quite clear we are going to be a sustainable business financially and in order to do that, you’ve got to stop looking at cash flows as your only measure of success.

“Most football clubs are cash-strapped and feel forced to think short-term.

“The right course is getting a balance between the immediate and the longer term, and as a club, we wanted a longer-term project - this one is perfect for us.

“The great thing is that it makes us a better business because the long-term return on investment in clean, green energy is excellent.”

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Davison, a former director of sustainability in his previous job at multi-national consultancy Atkins, credits the club’s ultimately unsuccessful bid to help stage Euro 2028 as the catalyst for the new drive towards sustainability.

“In our 2028 Euro bid, part of that application was a Green Plan - it was an important element - and it felt wrong not to put that plan into action considering the amount of work done,” he explained

“We had the feasibility studies already to hand, we had a planned approach already laid out and so we’re going ahead with it regardless.

“This summer will mark the first steps towards putting our immediate five-year sustainability plan into action.

“It’s ambitious but let’s do it, because, ultimately, going carbon neutral as a club will give us more money to spend on football - and we haven’t lost sight of that goal for an instant.”