As I write this Comment, the 2024 Paris Olympics are just around the corner. I, for one, am looking forward to this two-week long festival of athletic excellence as a refreshing change of pace from politics in the news, the persistently rainy British ‘summer’ weather, and the recent bitter (yet somehow always inevitable) defeat of the English football team at the Euro finals just a few weeks ago.
The world’s largest sporting event is due to host almost 11 000 athletes who will compete at over 300 events across 32 sports. And, as this is the first post-COVID games, it will all take place in front of millions of spectators in France, in addition to a global broadcast audience in the billions.
Speaking of ‘billions’, hosting an event like the Olympics is far from cheap; recent examples include: London 2012 costing just under US$17 billion, Rio 2016 coming in at a staggering US$23.6 billion, and Tokyo 2021 finishing at US$13.7 billion. According to The Washington Post, the French have managed to secure a surprisingly ‘cheap’ deal with the latest estimates placing the cost of hosting the Paris games at just under US$10 billion.
And there’s another cost to consider as well: the environmental one. Almost every human activity in the industrialised world comes with some form of climate impact attached, and huge events like the Olympics come with equally huge impacts. The London 2012 games is estimated to have had a carbon footprint of 3.3 million t, with that figure rising to 3.6 million t for Rio 2016. To put those figures into context, that’s equivalent to around 130 000 economy flights from Amsterdam to Rome.
With these figures in mind, the Paris Olympics’ organising committee has vowed to make these games the ‘greenest’ ever – an appropriate goal considering Paris’s role as host for the 2015 ‘1.5°C’ climate agreement. In addition to things like cardboard beds for athletes, and coffee tables being made from recycled shuttlecocks, the Paris games will rely heavily on existing sporting facilities. The London games, for example, saw the construction of 6 new stadiums, with Rio building 10 new permanent and 7 temporary facilities. In contrast, Paris will see just 2 new, purpose-built facilities, built using low-carbon construction methods. Previous games have also been criticised for the heavy use of diesel generators, with the London games using 4 million litres of diesel for electricity generation – the Paris organisers have worked to ensure that stadiums are fully connected to France’s (97.8% CO2–free) public electricity network.
And, of course, all of this comes in the midst of yet another ongoing climate change-induced European heatwave, following the warmest winter on record, with temperatures across the continent soaring well above 40°C (104°F). The race against climate change is on.
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More updates to come soon!
