Brazil will have the greenest of all World Cup

“Brazil will have the greenest of all World Cups”. The statement of the Minister of Sports, Orlando Silva, indicates the path that the government wants to give to investment in infrastructure for the FIFA World Cup that Brazil will host in 2014. It is true that four years from the beginning of the party, Silva’s phrase sounds like intention and marketing. Last week, the minister charged rush from the 12 cities to reform or build stadiums and said it is slow the access to US$ 228.3 million that the BNDES is making available for each of the cities that wants to build or renovate their arena. But for Valor, he explained how the government wants to make the World Cup in Brazil a sustainable manner.

The green sports architecture takes into account four basic topics: stages with environmental certification, priority to public transport, use of friendly fuels and offering organic products and promoting ecotourism.

In the construction and refurbishment of its stages, the 12 cities that should have games (Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Cuiaba, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Sao Paulo), must submit a environmental certification as a requirement for the project approval and receive funds from BNDES. The requirement is in line with the suggestions from FIFA that “strongly recommends” green seal on the arenas. The stadiums may have systems to use rainwater, solar power from photovoltaic panels or use energy-saving bulbs.

Sustainable facilities may represent an increase of up to 5% in the cost of the work. “But the investment has been reversed in the short term because the spending on the maintenance becomes smaller”, justifies Silva. From the 12 cities that will host the games, three already have private arenas and it is likely that most of them will have professional management after the events. The tendency is to seek projects that draw multipurpose stadiums, such as the World Cup in Germany. On the calendar, the work should begin this fall and stadiums must be ready on December 31, 2012.

Encourage a network of last generation arenas is only a cherry on the cake of the Cup investments. “People think the stadium and that’s it. But the arenas are only 10% of an event like this. The other 90% are in the stadiums, airports, hotels, infrastructure of the city as a whole”, says Adilson Primo, President of Siemens in Brazil, a company that has strengthened its portfolio of sustainable products. “Yes”, says the minister, “the Cup is an opportunity to promote Brazil in the world, to show that this is a safe country for investments. We have a great chance to improve our infrastructure”.

Primo estimated investments at about US$ 40 billion, with the overlap that will happen in Rio de Janeiro, home of the 2016 Olympics. “The Cup must be seen as 30 days that may be valid for 30 years”; says the executive.

The present value of government investment in airports, stadiums, urban mobility, ports and hotel chain reaches US$ 13.7 billion. “This number will grow a lot”, forecast Silva. Part of the resources will come from the private sector, but the flow is mostly public, with funding from the BNDES and Caixa Economica Federal. The estimate does not include further investments in security and telecommunications.

Silva says that in the reviewing of urban mobility projects, the focus was to prioritize transportation options. “Between altering the road system to benefit car or public transportation projects, we chose the second option”, Silva says. The projects for urban mobility estimated investments of US$ 6.6 billion. In Sao Paulo, the intention is to have a monorail linking Congonhas Airport, the metro, the rail networks and the Morumbi stadium. Manaus should also have its monorail. The option for Brasilia and Fortaleza is a LRV (Light Rail Vehicle). In Pernambuco, the idea is an upgrade of the railway. “They are all environmentally relevant options”, says the minister.

In the coming days, the Ministries of Sport and the Environment will announce a strategy to revitalize the national parks close to the World Cup cities. The idea is to promote ecotourism and the marketing of “Green Cup”. There are expected up to 600 thousand tourists from other countries. Another point is to transport the teams with cars running on ethanol and serve organic products.

Primo, from Siemens, recommends that the cities define soon a master plan for the World Cup. The plan, he says, was one of the secrets of success of the German edition in 2006. Last week, a delegation of British businessmen involved in the London Olympics was in Brazil making contacts with the Brazilians. Tessa Jowell, head of the London games, gave tips to the success of these mega events: “Set as soon as you can the money spending, giving rise to unanticipated costs” and after that, “a strictly respect to the worksheet”.