'Green Games' under scrutiny

Wind turbines, biomass boilers for heating, ground source heat pumps, photovoltaic panels, and microhydro technology. Sounds like a renewable energy lab, right?

Not at all. Organizers of the 2012 Olympic Games in London are determined to make them one of the “greenest” events in history. Those are just a few of the technologies they hope to use.

London 2012 organizers plan to build an Olympic village that will be 25 percent more energy efficient and emit 50 percent less carbon dioxide than current building regulations mandate; 20 percent of the energy used in the village and the Olympic park will be renewable; 20 percent of the venue’s construction materials will be recycled; and 90 percent of buildings that are demolished will be recycled.

Clearly, London is trying to mimic Sydney’s 2000 Olympic Games, considered by many the greenest Games ever.

The critics speak
But while the London Games' plans all sound commendable, quite a few people question their “greeness.”

Darren Johnson, a member of London’s Green Party, expressed disappointment that only 20 percent of the Olympic village’s energy will be from renewable sources.

“The government has a target for making all new homes carbon neutral by 2016,” Johnson was quoted as saying by British media. “But if we can’t get a showpiece development like the Olympic village right by 2012 there is not a lot of hope for 2016.”

Others question the cost —and who benefits.

Over the past few years, cost estimates for the London Olympics have gone from a couple of a billion pounds to 9.35 billion pounds.

“While there is always a lot of emotion and outpouring of national fervor associated with large-scale sporting events and developments, all of the available independent research suggests that the economic benefits of such developments are, in fact, overstated,” Dr Paul Downward, a Lecturer at Staffordshire University, told the BBC. “Moreover, while such events may promote more intangible benefits such as feel-good factor, these are simply not researched.”

Others question the cost and the greenness together—that is, spending nearly 10 billion pounds to make a statement with what organizers are calling an extremely “green” event.

“Has anyone calculated the carbon footprint of the forthcoming Olympics?” wrote Diana Stevenson, an Oxford resident, on a BBC website containing comments about the London Games. “I’m sure it will wipe out any reductions Britain makes through recent legislation. We should be spending the money on a new Thames Barrier instead, to protect London from rising sea levels.”

A better idea: Repurpose the venues
Still, many cities have benefited long-term from hosting the Games. Athens’ infrastructure was heavily modernized for the 2004 Summer Olympics—a boon to city residents and the Greek tourism industry. And public and private investment in Barcelona leading up to the 1992 Games helped pull the city out of an economic depression. The local economy has boomed ever since.

In London’s case, how green the Olympics will be could be judged on how the city repurposes the venues after the Games—a judgment many years down the line. The greenest Games, we would argue, get the most mileage out of the investment for many years—much the way bikers “recycle” their Harleys.

Certainly, London stands in stark contrast to Beijing’s attempt to clean up its act for next year. Starting a few weeks before the 2008 Games, the Chinese government is planning to shut down or reduce the operations of nearly every factory in or near the city to reduce air pollution. After the event, they’ll fire them back up—a green step on a brown journey, to say the least.

Outsourcing the Games
Some observers have suggested that a more sensible way to resolve both the cost and “greenness” issues would be to “outsource” the Olympics to Athens or Seoul, where Olympic facilities already exist.

That idea has considerable merit. After all, a precedent was set long before the Sydney Games. The city of Denver declined to host the 1976 Winter Olympics because residents feared the planned development would hurt the environment. In the end, the Games were held in Innsbruck, Austria, where Olympic facilities already existed.

We’d argue Denver’s Olympics were the greenest Games ever.

Cameron M. Burns is Senior Editor and Noah Buhayar is a writer and editor at Rocky Mountain Institute.