Petition against oil companies in skiing

The petition was launched by a Norwegian organisation founded in 2024 that opposes the decades-long sponsorship of the Ski World Cup by oil companies such as Equinor. It demands that the International Ski Federation (FIS) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) publish a report by the 2026/27 season. This report is to examine whether fossil fuel marketing is still acceptable in organised winter sports – similar to what has long been the case with tobacco advertising. A current example is the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, which are sponsored by the Italian energy company ENI: despite its sustainability promises, ENI continues to invest primarily in oil and gas production. The petition clearly criticises this greenwashing. Professional skiers from the Alpine region, such as Italy’s Markus Eder and Switzerland’s Elisabeth Gerritzen, have also signed it.

Green sport instead of green slopes

The background: as the main drivers of the climate crisis, fossil fuels are directly linked to the decline in snow and the threat to winter sports – especially in the Alpine region, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average. The petition also refers to the massive health damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which are up to 150 times more deadly than renewable alternatives. “These companies have actively ignored science and invested in more and more fossil fuels in recent decades, while greenwashing themselves with marketing measures. Skiing must not be complicit in this”, says petition initiator Nikolai Schirmer. Ski Fossil Free is therefore campaigning for a winter sport that takes sustainability and its own future seriously: for a greener sport instead of green slopes.

Sources and further information:

www.alpenverein.de/artikel/die-klimakrise-im-alpenraum_f31acb6e-6397-4c12-a81f-41fc2c613861 (de),  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.110754(en),  www.skifossilfree.org/ (en), www.folkmotfossilmakta.no (no), An oil and gas corporation killing winters with its planet-heating pollution is sponsoring the Winter Olympics - Greenpeace International (en)