Each room in the Athletes Village built for the Paris Olympics has a fan and blackout blinds and the building uses geothermal systems to tap cool sub-surface water. The buildings do not have air conditioning as Games organizers insist the measures taken in their construction should keep the rooms between 23 C and 26 C.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
Organizers of the Paris Olympics are planning to make this summer’s Games the greenest ever, but their efforts are being undercut by several national teams, including Canada’s, in one critical area – air conditioning.
Paris 2024 officials have pledged to produce half the amount of carbon emissions than previous Games, largely by using recycled material and relying on existing infrastructure. “It is no longer possible to organize the Games while ignoring the immense challenge posed by climate change,” officials said in a sustainability and legacy report.
The showpiece of their green plan is the athletes’ village, a sprawling complex of 82 buildings along the River Seine northeast of Paris that will be home to more than 14,000 athletes and officials during the Olympic Games, and 8,000 during the Paralympics.
Officials say every effort has been made to make the village as green as possible. The buildings have been constructed out of low carbon concrete and wood, and many units are powered by solar energy. The rooms are filled with eco-friendly furniture including cardboard bed frames, coffee tables made from disused badminton shuttlecocks and chairs made out of old bottle caps. The athletes’ restaurant will also be free of plastic bottles.
A vendor sells bottles of water during a hot day at the iconic Montmartre hilltop in Paris, France on June 24, 2024.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
There’s also no air conditioning.
Instead organizers are relying on a geothermal system that pumps cool water from 70 metres underground through a network of pipes underneath the floors. The buildings have also been laid out to take advantage of breezes off the Seine, and each room has been fitted with a fan and blackout blinds.
Officials insist that even during a heat wave, all of the measures should keep the rooms between 23 C and 26 C. “We designed these buildings so that they would be comfortable places to live in in the summer, in 2024 and later on, and we don’t need air conditioning in these buildings because we oriented the facades so that they wouldn’t get too much sun during the summer,” Yann Krysinski, the head project management for the Games, told Reuters.
The decision to forgo traditional air conditioning doesn’t sit well with more than a dozen national teams. The United States, Britain, Japan and Canada are among the teams that are planning to install temporary AC units in their athletes’ rooms.
“Aligned with our commitment to providing optimal health and performance conditions for Team Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee, with its sport partners and NSOs [national sport organizations], has implemented a number of heat mitigation strategies in Paris to compliment the measures put in place by the Paris 2024 organizing committee including air conditioning units in some athlete rooms in case of extreme heat,” the committee said in a statement.
The British Olympic Association is planning to spend more than £50,000 ($86,000) on portable air-conditioning units, according to media reports, about the same amount as Australia’s team.
Sarah Hirshland, the head of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams, said air conditioning was a “very high priority” and something U.S. athletes felt was critical. “As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” she told reporters last week during the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.
Paris 2024 officials have agreed to make “temporary low-emission cooling equipment” available for teams to rent. But organizers are hoping most countries stick with the green plan.
“Paris 2024 also anticipates the effect of cultural differences in thermal comfort perception and plans to educate athletes and officials on best practices,” noted the sustainability report.
A man sunbathes during a hot day in the Tuileries garden in Paris, France, on June 24, 2024.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
France has experienced record breaking heat waves in recent years and Paris temperatures have climbed above 35 C in the end of July and August, when the Olympics and Paralympics are scheduled to take place. The hottest temperature on record in Paris was 42.6 C set at the end of July, 2019.
Jenny Casson, a member of Canada’s Olympic rowing team, said she started training in a heat chamber to prepare for 40 C heat. On numerous occasions she said she couldn’t finish the workouts because she had trouble breathing.
“I am still worried for what those experiences did to my body and the long-term effects,” she said in the report. “Looking back on it now, I think it was dangerous and my body was responding to a very real fear of overheating.”
Workers interact at the new Olympic and Paralympic Village in Saint-Denis, Paris, France, on June 4, 2024.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail