We are going up, I said we are going up.
Forest Green are tantalizingly close
to playing in the third tier of English football
for the first time in their history.
Being successful on the pitch
absolutely strengthens our eco message,
because it gives us credibility
in the eyes of football fans.
This is Forest Green Rovers,
UN-certified as carbon neutral, and described by FIFA
as the world's greenest football club.
The mission became about reaching sports fans,
people that are passionate about a particular sport,
in our case football, and making them fans
of the environment as well, and we've seen that work.
Our ethics and sustainability,
we brought them here to the club.
Our fans come here, they see what we do,
they go home and they start to change how they live.
Football has an added kind of opportunity,
which I think is a responsibility,
to use its platform to influence people.
Thanks in large part to their owner,
these minnows of the English game are proving
to have an outsized influence.
The season just passed saw the team play
in the Fourth Division.
That's about 70 teams below the likes
of giants Manchester City and Liverpool.
But the team are on track for promotion to League One,
something never achieved in the club's 133-year history,
and it could have an even greater impact thanks
to the club's leadership in fighting the climate crisis.
Based in the west of the country,
Forest Green Rovers has become something
of a passion project for the man often described
as a green energy industrialist.
When I got here in August, 2010,
the club had 13 players, that was it.
Part-time, never trained on a full size pitch,
so I helped them out, I thought, why not?
Club was 120 years old, big part of its local community.
At the end of the summer, they said,
"You need to be in charge, you need to be the chairman."
I was like, "Whoa, I'm really busy,"
but they made it clear, it was that or the club would fold,
and so I thought about it and thought,
well, you know, how hard can it be?
I'll just run the football club.
But I didn't think beyond that.
I didn't think about anything.
Vince is an outlier when it comes
to business leaders, let alone the owner of a sports team.
Dropping out of school,
he joined a new age traveler community,
where he tinkered with trucks to get by.
In 1985, he was caught up in the Battle of the Beanfield,
an assault by British police
on travelers heading towards Stonehenge.
Get out. Open the door, then.
Stop it. Just come out.
By the early '90s, he'd built a small windmill
on his van, connected it to power lights and a water pump,
and found himself on a hill above Nailsworth,
the home of Forest Green Rovers.
Because I had a windmill on the roof of my trailer,
I knew it was a windy spot,
because you're in touch with those things
when your energy comes from the wind.
You've got batteries, you've got meters,
you see it come in, you see it go out.
You're in tune with what you use and where it comes from.
So I knew it was a windy hill, and then I just had this idea
that I could spend another 10 years
living this low-impact lifestyle myself,
or I could drop back in, try and build a bigger windmill,
so I decided to do the second one.
Vince started a wind energy business
called Ecotricity.
Its success turned him into a multi-millionaire,
and was instrumental in establishing renewable power
in the UK's energy mix.
I mean, wind energy wasn't even 1%
in Britain at that point.
And what are we now?
Renewable energy combined, about 40%,
and most of that is wind energy.
Transforming the energy landscape
was the priority, but Vince was becoming conscious
that creating a more sustainable UK
would require more holistic change in our daily lives.
I'm no Jeremy Clarkson, I want to be clear about that,
but I am a bit of a petrol head,
and I'm a tree hugger as well.
I spend my life building windmills
and fighting climate change, and driving fast cars.
What am I gonna do about it?
It's a big contradiction.
It can't all be sandals and lentils, can it?
He went about building
the UK's first electric vehicle charging network.
More people would buy electric cars
if there were more places to charge up,
and people would build more charging points
if more people bought electric cars,
so we thought we'd jump in, build a national network,
and try and get the whole thing going.
Then, he helped build an electric sports car,
the Nemesis.
Since then, he started a vegan food company,
and even produces diamonds made
with carbon captured from the atmosphere.
I got into energy in the '90s,
because the way the energy was made
in Britain back then was the biggest single source
of carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
This is where the mission now comes from,
because we found that transport was the second biggest,
and food was the third, and between them,
they're 80% of everybody's personal carbon footprint,
and that rule also applies to a football club of any size,
a business, a whole country, basically.
And it was food that started the changes
at Forest Green Rovers.
Day one here of being in charge of the football club,
I bumped into my first thing.
We were serving a beef lasagna to our players,
and I sat down immediately with the chef and the manager
and said, we can't do this,
so we took red meat off our menu
on day one of being in charge.
We upset some people, and we said, look, try our food,
and this is why we do it, by the way,
we didn't just do it, we explained why,
and if you don't like what we serve here,
just bring your own, we don't mind.
I'm not vegan or vegetarian,
but I don't mind not eating meat when I'm here,
and I think quite a few people have recognized
that they can eat meat any other time
of the day or the week.
Why not try vegan food and then be pleasantly surprised
that they enjoy it?
In the old days, you'd go up
and you'd get a cup of coffee,
and somebody would say, do you want some of this,
and pull out a hip flask,
and you'd think, I'm not quite sure,
and they'd brought milk into the stadium,
they'd brought cows milk into the stadium.
So those changes were quite hard, I think,
and I think some of the fan base moved away from the club
as a consequence of that,
but we've introduced a whole new set of supporters
and followers who really like what the club stand for now.
Food sales have gone through the roof,
the crowd growth has been phenomenal as well,
and all of these were things that people,
plenty of people, said wouldn't happen.
They said people won't come to a game;
if they do, they won't eat;
they'll bankrupt the club.
All this kind of stuff, so there was plenty of skepticism,
but I didn't ever doubt it would work, actually.
I didn't really care either,
because I couldn't run a football club that broke all
of the rules that I lived by, the things that I believe in.
I couldn't do that, and I would've rather walked away,
but I didn't, I did it instead, and look where we are.
To earn the title
of the world's greenest football club,
FGR have done much more than just change the menu.
The stadium is solely powered by green energy;
the pitch itself is organic,
free from pesticides and weed killer,
fed by seaweed and captured rainwater.
It's also cut with a solar powered Mowbot.
For electric car drivers,
they can charge up during the game.
I think it permeates to a huge level.
It's a little bit of thinking out of the box.
It's just trying to think about things in a different way,
not the way it's always been done.
Well, it's just a passion that I have,
to see us get to a place where we live
in a more sustainable way.
We're not wasting stuff, not polluting stuff,
not wiping out nature and not causing the climate crisis.
The players and staff can eat what they want,
but when at work, training, or match day,
there's only vegan food served.
Wingback Kane Wilson, the league's player of the season,
is one of an increasing number of professional athletes
who are turning away from meat.
I had an injury, tendonitis,
which is like an injury that was inflammatory,
and was in my knee, and I was struggling.
I tried everything to get rid of this injury,
I couldn't shake it, and it was costing me money,
because I wasn't playing,
so I had to try and find a way to get rid of it.
I was gonna go for an operation,
I was thinking of all different options,
and I just seen an athlete in America talking
about how he had suffered from it
and changed his diet and it had gone,
so I said, well, that's what I've gotta do now, isn't it?
I mean, it worked for me, hands down.
A large number of high profile athletes
extol the benefits of going vegan,
from sports as diverse as tennis, basketball,
ultra marathon racing, and even body building.
Some at Forest Green are convinced
their vegan only food rule might be contributing
to their recent success.
The team hasn't dropped out
of the top three places all season.
So does playing for the world's greenest club
change anything for a player?
It probably just rewires you a little bit in terms
of maybe things that you wasn't as conscious of before.
It's everything.
It's everything involved with Forest Green.
I didn't even know it was possible
for a t-shirt to be made out of coffee.
I didn't know that was a thing.
What's perhaps most remarkable
is how far the Forest Green ethos reaches,
far beyond the few thousand people
of local village, Nailsworth.
Welcome to the "Heaven's Devils" podcast,
a Forest Green Rovers podcast by two Americans
who have no idea what they're talking about.
Yeah, so we were brought in by the vegan
and green aspects of the club.
It matched our personal ethics, and so we found this club
that is doing so much good off the pitch,
and we were like, if we're gonna give our money
and our time to a team, let's do it to a team that is--
That matters.
That matters. Just like The Clash
are the only band that matters,
for us, FGR are the only club that matters.
Nathan and Shyam have made it over from the US
for a critical game in Forest Green Rovers' history.
It's the end of April, 2022,
and with four games to go of the season,
a draw away at Bristol Rovers would secure promotion
to the league above.
Promotion, that's all I want.
One point will do.
True to form,
the greenest club in the world arrives
on an electric bus, something the club hopes
to make a permanent fixture next season.
Dale is in relaxed mood, happy to see a vegan pie
on another club's menu.
Vegan pie of the month.
How often do you see that away?
Oh, you know what?
It's quite common now.
It's amazing.
We went Carlisle a few months ago,
and they had two kinds of vegan pie.
Leading the way for the majority
of the season, Forest Green.
It's played in low and it's sent wide.
Wilson into Aitchison; Hendry shot;
brilliantly stopped by Belshaw.
Forest Green have had some big opportunities.
How is this game still 0-0?
Rovers want a free kick, but it's full time.
And it's joyous scenes for Forest Green Rovers.
The goalless draw is enough
to send the team up a division,
the highest they've ever climbed in their 133-year history.
Today belongs to Forest Green Rovers.
We are going up, I said we are going up.
Before securing promotion,
Forest Green estimated they had
over 100 international fan groups.
But it's not just down
to what the players have achieved on the pitch.
We did a media survey recently in the last 12 months.
The global impact of Forest Green Rovers in all forms
of media was 5 billion impressions, right,
and that is as a League Two football club,
so I would say we have a global reach
and that's a good thing.
In League One, we'll just have a bigger global reach.
That reach doesn't just elevate
the green message, it's good for business too.
More fans generally means more shirt sales
and more pay-per-view streams,
but crucially, for a small club like Forest Green,
it's the ability to compete in the big leagues,
and that comes from sponsorship.
Businesses are adopting green things, products, services,
whatever it is, and are looking for places
to advertise themselves and to sponsor,
and we find ourselves here as a very visible,
greenest club in the world kind of stuff,
and so we've naturally attracted a lot
of sponsors in the last couple of years
that other clubs at our level won't get, don't get.
Purpose is the most important thing, right,
as a business or a football club.
We have to make money to exist,
but we don't exist to make money, right?
It's like the old question,
do you live to eat or do you eat to live?
We only eat to live.
If you exist to make money,
then you'll take the hard-nosed business approach,
you'll hurt the environment around you,
the people around you, because you're chasing money
above everything else,
so we don't do that, we have a different purpose.
I just don't think, actually, there ever has
to be a conflict between the environment
and economics and ethics, actually.
I think we can have all three.
With promotion to the third tier
of English football secured,
Forest Green's journey has entered a new phase.
The club is soon to start building a larger stadium,
the world's first made all from timber.
Eco Park even includes a green tech hub for local business.
Whatever project Dale Vince pursues,
there's usually an element of activism,
especially when it comes to tackling the climate crisis.
Back in March, campaigners interrupted Premier League games
in the Just Stop Oil protests.
It turns out Vince had accidentally funded it.
The need to stop oil transcends sport,
it transcends motor race, it transcends everything,
and they reached out and said, look,
we wanna start a new campaign,
will you help us with a bit of cash, and I did.
What they didn't say to me was that they were planning
to disrupt football matches, which I find amusing.
It's direct action that sets Vince
and Forest Green Rovers apart.
Removing meats and single use plastics from sale.
Using renewable energy.
Other sports teams, even some of the biggest,
have been recognized for their work
on reducing their environmental impact,
but like plenty of businesses nowadays,
many are accused of trying to assuage any guilt forming
in more eco-conscious fans, and simply not doing enough.
A portion of every Red Sox ticket
will be contributed
to the Aspiration Planet Protection fund,
which will use carbon credits to offset Fenway emissions.
Ultimately, Vince has found sport
to be a powerful element of communication
in challenging the status quo of the climate challenge.
In his own football team,
he doesn't just reach his direct community,
but all those that come into contact with it,
whether at home or abroad.
From supporting the conservation of the ocean
to flying the Palestinian flag on match day,
Forest Green Rovers has an identity like no other club,
something that's hard to come by
in the world of modern day sport,
and while FGR might be unique, other clubs are taking note.
There's a pump laying outside the front
of our ground now that's on its way to Port Vale soon,
'cause we had a conversation about car charging
and they want some advice,
and we actually had some old hardware,
so we said, oh, we'll give you a charger.
That was before they beat Exeter for us
on the last day of the season, which won us the league.
We are going up, I said we are going up.
Have you embraced veganism yet?
No, I haven't.
No, no, don't tell Dale, for god's sake.