This year's Paris Olympics will use renewable energy, serve more vegetarian meals and strictly limit the use of plastic bottles, making it impossible for an event involving so much construction and international travel to be environmentally sustainable. Can you say that?
After the extravagant FIFA Soccer World Cup, which will feature air-conditioned stadiums in Qatar in 2022, the Paris Games hope to present a more sober model for global sporting events.
“We hope that through our efforts to reduce the impact of Paris 2024 we can prove that it is possible to do things differently,” Georgina Glennon, the organizing committee's director of environmental excellence, said in a recent interview. he said in an interview with AFP.
One of the main differences will be in the overall carbon footprint, with organizers aiming for half the amount produced by the 2012 London Olympics and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Paris 2024 was originally set with a target equivalent to 1.58 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, but that target has been lowered to around 1.75 million tonnes.
Asked whether the latest targets could be met, Mr Glennon said: “What we don't know at the moment is the (carbon impact) of the audience.”
One key factor is the number of airborne flights associated with the Games, which are highly polluting, and “not all tickets have been sold yet,” she added.
An external consultancy has been tasked with auditing the impact on travel, construction, catering and sporting goods, with final figures expected to be released in October.
The key to reducing Paris' carbon footprint was included in the city's original bid.
Georgina Glennon is Director of Environmental Excellence at the Paris Games
Emmanuel Dunant
Organizers have committed to using existing or temporary venues for 95% of sporting events, meaning there is no need to build new stadiums from scratch.
The only major new construction projects are an aquatics center, a medium-sized venue for badminton and gymnastics in Paris, and an Olympic village in the impoverished Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis.
Village contractors had to agree to reduce emissions from their buildings by 30% compared to standard construction, many of which meant experimenting with low-carbon concrete and wood. Masu.
Other changes include connecting all sports venues to mains electricity. This means stadium operators no longer rely on diesel generators for power.
“To give you an idea of the amount of diesel at the London Games, 4 million liters were consumed for electricity purposes alone,” Glennon said.
Top Olympic sponsor Coca-Cola has also agreed to install 700 newly designed drinking fountains at Olympic venues, meaning around 50 per cent of soft drinks will be served without plastic bottles. It means that.
Meals at other sports venues will be 60% vegetarian. Recycling and reuse clauses were routinely written into equipment supplier contracts. All the energy provided by national energy group EDF to the Games will come from renewable sources.
Games organizers still face an uphill battle to convince observers about emissions compensation policies known as “carbon offsets.”
Even if it achieved its emissions target of 1.75 million tonnes, this would be equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of a French town with a population of 200,000.
They initially claimed that the 2024 Paris Games would be “carbon positive”, meaning that the organizing committee would invest in projects such as tree planting that would capture more carbon dioxide over its lifetime than the Games emit. It means to do.
This target has also been revised downwards, with the Games now aiming to be “carbon neutral”, although a bid for an offset project in France was scrapped late last year for budget reasons, Glennon said.
Offsetting remains controversial due to questions about the environmental benefits of many schemes and a lack of independent oversight.
Some critics believe its main role is to provide polluters with a clean conscience.
“There has been a lot of criticism about some certification methodologies, such as some countries being more serious than others, which is why we chose projects that were particularly serious from the beginning,” Glennon said. refutes.
French forestry projects have the national certification Label Bas Carbon, and international projects have been “thoroughly audited” and will be released to the media “soon,” Glennon promised.
The Olympics have faced protests from environmental groups since the 1980s.
Some people directly disagree, saying the social benefits outweigh the environmental costs, while others simply think the concept needs to be reconsidered.
In 2021, a group of researchers suggested in the journal Nature Sustainability that events should be scaled back, held in the same locations, and involve significantly fewer international tourists.
“Sports and the Olympics have a unique emotion and message of peace,” Glennon argued.
“The future starts with the present, and the present starts with understanding your impact and trying to do everything you can to reduce it,” she said.
“That has been our philosophy since the beginning.”
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