In Paris, the Olympics clean up their act

HOW do you produce a global sporting event, with millions of people swooping down on one city, in the age of global warming?

That is the test for the Paris Olympics this summer.

The organisers say they’re putting the Games on a climate diet. These Olympics, they say, will generate no more than half the greenhouse gas emissions of recent Olympics. That means tightening the belt on everything that produces planet-warming emissions: electricity, food, buildings and transportation, including the jet fuel that athletes and fans burn travelling the world to get there.

An event that attracts 10,500 athletes and an estimated 15 million spectators is, by definition, going to have an environmental toll. And that has led those who love the Games but hate the pollution to suggest that the Olympics should be scattered around the world, in existing facilities, to eliminate the need for so much new construction and air travel. That’s why Paris is being watched so closely.

It is making more space for bikes and less for cars. It’s doing away with huge, diesel-powered generators, a fixture of big sporting events. It’s planning guest menus that are less polluting to grow and cook than typical French fare: more plants, less steak au poivre. Solar panels will float, temporarily, on the Seine.

But the organisers’ most significant act may be what they are not doing: They aren’t building. At least, not as much.

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Instead of building new showpieces for the Games (which generates lots of greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of concrete and steel), the Paris Olympics are repurposing many of the city’s existing attractions, including the Grand Palais, the plaza known as the Concorde and even a swimming pool built for the 1924 Paris Olympics.

It’s not without controversy.

One notable emissions-reduction effort, a decision to forgo conventional air conditioning at the athletes village, has raised concerns. Instead, the buildings will rely on a cooling system that uses water pulled from underground. Several Olympic teams are considering bringing their own air-conditioners.

Future template

Still, the hope is that experiments such as these will offer a template for other Olympics in the future, and other cities worldwide. The few new buildings that are being built, including the athletes’ housing, as well as a swimming complex and an arena, are using less cement and more wood. They have solar panels and greenery on their roofs.

The new buildings are also meant to have a life far beyond the Olympics. They’re designed to be used by local residents for decades to come and, the leaders of the Paris 2024 organising committee say, revitalise the city’s suburbs. “We set for ourselves ambitions that have never been set for any event before, let alone have this scale,” said Georgina Grenon, who is in charge of the Games’ environmental efforts.

Critics counter that, although much of what Paris is doing is commendable, particularly the limits on new construction, to truly address the climate crisis requires more than paring back emissions here and there. “We need to fundamentally rethink these huge mega events,” said Cesar Dugast, co-founder of a climate analysis group called Eclaircies. “Instead of concentrating all the events in a single city, it could be envisaged to distribute them around the world.”

There’s a more immediate risk facing the Olympics: climate change itself. Rising global temperatures are making Paris summers dangerously hot. That has heightened concerns about how to protect athletes and fans in late July and August.

City officials say they have planted thousands of trees in recent years to temper summer heat. They are erecting misting towers to spray the air. The search is on for wide umbrellas under which fans can wait. “We have solutions. We are preparing,” said Dan Lert, deputy mayor in charge of preparing the city for heat. “It’s a big test.”

When it comes to emissions, transportation is another headache. Paris has already been limiting space for cars and making space for bikes, and it’s using the Games to accelerate that shift.

But the Olympics, with its huge crowds, threatens trouble for how Parisians get around their city, with many making plans to flee on vacation.

Pierre Rabadan, a former pro rugby player who is now Paris’ deputy mayor for sports, lifted his shoulders against a wind and walked briskly out of the tram stop in front of the city’s new basketball arena, at the top of Rue de la Chapelle. He pointed to an almost-finished bike lane along the road, carved out of what had been a wide boulevard devoted to automobiles.

Since the election of Anne Hidalgo as mayor in 2014, Paris has added about 600 km of bike lanes. About 10 per cent have been dubbed Olympistes, a play on “piste,” the French word for track.

“The problem is we built the city around cars,” Rabadan said.

Another problem is that the city’s metro system is bursting at the seams. Trains are already crowded, and workers are rushing to complete new extensions of two lines in time to serve the Games.

To make room for Olympics visitors, the city has urged people to stay off the trains or to work from home.

The Olympics, Grenon said, offer “a laboratory”, particularly when it comes to the buildings designed from scratch.

A new aquatic centre, on the edge of a highway in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, is a showpiece of Douglas fir and pine. Its 5,000-square-metre roof curves like a wave: The architects designed it that way to shrink the size of the building, reducing the energy needed to heat the space.

The pool is five meters deep only where necessary to have greater depth for diving, and shallower where it’s not. That, too, saves water and energy it takes to heat the water. Some of that heat will come from a nearby data centre. The venue’s 5,000 seats are made from recycled plastic.

The goal, said Cécilia Gross, one of the architects, was “to do better with less.” NYTIMES