Why Greening the Games Should Be a Team Effort 

The Paris Olympics is set to be the greenest yet. Yet it is hard to say that for certain; determining the carbon footprint of a sporting event remains more alchemy than science. 

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The largest contributor to a sporting event’s emissions remains fan and athlete travel. Exactly who should take responsibility for this remains unclear. In the absence of a global carbon reporting standard for sporting events, some ingenious carbon accounting can be used to obscure the true environmental impact of our international sporting events.

Ultimately, we have a shared responsibility to green the games. Who knows, perhaps a unified push to decarbonise sports would provide the mood music our wider climate efforts so desperately need? 

The Paris Olympic Games committee is aiming to reduce this year’s games by half compared to Tokyo’s, with a goal of limiting carbon emissions to 1.75 million tonnes. In contrast, the previous Olympic Games in Tokyo generated approximately 2.73 million tonnes of CO2, according to the Tokyo Olympic Games Committee. 

Paris has a unique ability to provide environmentally friendly games.

This is in part because of the city’s pre-existing infrastructure: 95% of the venues used in Paris are existing venues or temporary structures. But beyond this, France’s particularly green grid will go a long way to reduce the event’s emissions. With an energy make-up of 74% nuclear, 16.3% hydroelectric, and 9.1% coming from fossil fuels, the Paris Games will be powered almost entirely by zero-emission energy. The Paris Olympic Committee deserves credit for taking their emission profile seriously. 

Yet the reality is that the Paris Olympic Committee does not have any control over one of the largest sources of the event’s emissions. According to Olympic organisers, a quarter of the emissions associated with an event will be generated by spectator travel. 

At the 2012 London Summer Games, spectator-related emissions were responsible for an approximate 913,000 metric tons of carbon, or 28% of the 3.3 million tonnes emitted during the event.

This problem is not just confined to the Olympics. This is a big summer for sport, with UEFA’s three major tournaments adding an additional 177 fixtures to their list. In other words, teams and the fans flew an estimated 2 billion air miles across the 2024 to 2025 season, the same as 4,000 trips to the moon and back. 

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We have to ask a question about responsibility. How much responsibility can the Paris Olympic Games organisers take for traveller’s emissions? How much responsibility should they have to take? Should the Paris organisers shoulder the blame, or take the credit, when a team decides to transport their athletes by train compared to private jet? 

These questions have not been answered. This is partly because there remains no accepted global standard for counting event emissions. Our organisation has a clear approach which uses ISO standards, but sadly many others do not follow this best practice approach. A definitive agreement on foot-printing global sports events would help us to cut through a lot of the noise made in the world of sport which is, in essence, greenwashing. 

For example, the claim that Beijing’s sea-level ski slopes were “carbon neutral” really would not hold much water if scrutinised properly. The Olympics, after all, is by its nature global. It should therefore be a global responsibility to reduce the emissions associated with that event, especially when such a large bulk of them are outside of the organiser’s control. 

Firstly, we have to accept that not every potential host is in the same position as France. Not everyone’s grid is decarbonised, and not every nation has the pre-existing sports facilities. Yet we should not allow that to prevent emerging or developing nations from hosting the games; the charge of hypocrisy would be hard to avoid. 

The Olympic Games have always been an opportunity for nations to showcase their cities and culture. Only allowing developed nations, especially nations that emit more than their fair share of carbon in other areas, would be the essence of carbon colonialism. 

Instead, perhaps participating nations should help to sponsor low-carbon technologies and stadium construction, or assist with the development of low-carbon travel infrastructure? Similarly, perhaps competing nations could start to consider how they can transport their teams and fans to the games in the greenest way possible? 

We need to move away from the idea that carbon emissions are one entity’s, or even one nation’s, responsibility. Territorial carbon accounting may allow nations to pat themselves on the back while pointing at their downward carbon trends. However all too often, emissions simply get moved around, not reduced. Britain labelling its de-industrialisation as decarbonisation is a prime example. However, the atmosphere does not care where carbon is emitted, or by who. 

Historically, the Olympics have been a symbol of global unity. Let us first agree on how we count sport’s emissions. Then we should work together to reduce them. 

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