As nations get ready to battle it out on the football pitch this summer, researchers at the University of Reading, UK, have created a very different kind of league table, one that ranks countries not by their goals, but by how they’re tackling climate change.
It’s called The Real Scoreline, and it gives every competing nation a single score out of 99 based on how they stack up on six key climate measures. The results are presented as a set of virtual playing cards, making a complex global issue easy to explore, share and debate.
A new way to talk about climate
The idea is simple: take serious climate data and present it in a format people already know and love. Each card shows a country’s score along with the University of Reading’s well-known “climate stripes”, those vertical coloured bars that show how much a country has warmed over time.
Professor Hannah Cloke, Regius Professor in Meteorology and Climate Science at Reading, said: “This summer’s football may be remembered for more than just the goals. Extreme heat will affect how players perform on the pitch, and the millions of spectators making the trip will feel it too.
“Off the pitch, competing nations face no easy draws. Some countries are already paying the climate penalty, and there is little extra time left to act.
“Climate change is one of the defining challenges facing every country, but it can often feel distant or difficult to relate to. The Real Scoreline takes robust climate data and presents it in a way that is familiar to fans all over the world, inviting everyone to compare countries, debate rankings and engage with one of the most important issues facing all of us.
“If fans start talking about The Real Scoreline this summer, starting climate conversations in the pub, at home, wherever they are watching, that is a result worth having.”
How the scoring works
All 48 competing nations are ranked against six climate indicators, drawn from trusted sources like the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, Lancet Countdown, Our World in Data and Zero Tracker. The six measures are:
- Projected temperature change
- Projected rainfall change
- CO₂ emissions per person
- Heat stress exposure
- Fossil fuel dependence
- Net-zero commitments
Each country gets a score from 1 to 99 for each measure. The better the performance, the higher the score. Add them all up, and you get a snapshot of how each nation is doing overall.
The top five
Paraguay (75) comes out on top, thanks to low emissions per person, stable projected rainfall and an ambitious net-zero target of 2030.
England (73) and Scotland (73) tie, sharing UK-wide data. Both do well on heat stress and temperature stability, but high fossil fuel use drags them down.
New Zealand (72) scores well for low projected warming and very low heat stress, though per-person emissions remain a problem.
Austria (71) stands out for stable rainfall patterns and a net-zero target of 2040, earlier than most.
The bottom five
Iran (33) faces severe projected warming and gets 98% of its energy from fossil fuels.
Iraq (30) has near-total fossil fuel dependency along with some of the worst projected warming and rainfall disruption in the tournament.
USA (26) produces more than 14 tonnes of carbon emissions per person and is the only competing nation with no net-zero target at all.
Qatar (24) has the highest emissions per person of any nation in the tournament — a staggering 40 tonnes, more than double its nearest rival — and is almost entirely fossil fuel dependent.
Saudi Arabia (7) finishes bottom of the table, with the worst projected warming, the highest fossil fuel dependency, and a net-zero target set for 2060.
Join the conversation
Throughout June and July, The Real Scoreline will fuel head-to-head country comparisons, expert commentary and digital content tied to the summer’s biggest sporting moments. The cards are available to download at rdg.ac.uk/planet, perfect for sparking a chat about climate, whether you’re at home, in the pub, or watching with friends.