PARIS — For all the steps Paris organizers have taken to put on the greenest Olympics ever, their boldest measure — the one they’ve touted again and again — pertains to the dorms in the Athletes’ Village. The rooms don’t have air-conditioning.
Because of other cooling measures, organizers have assured, the athletes won’t need it.
But in a farcical turn, when the Games start next month, an Olympic Village designed to showcase sustainability will be more of an energy hog than organizers had hoped.
That’s because portable air-conditioning units will be everywhere. Wheeled in. Shipped in. Ordered by visiting countries that want their athletes to sleep well and perform at the highest level — even if it means a larger carbon footprint.
Worried about what potentially could be the world’s hottest year on record, wealthier nations have effectively undercut Paris’s marquee sustainability measure, signaling that, yes, they care about environmental aims — but not if it risks the comfort of their athletes.
Some of those athletes are accustomed to temperatures cooler than what the dorms might have provided and raised concerns to their national Olympic committees.
“It’s a high-performance environment,” said Strath Gordon, the chief of public affairs for the Olympic committee of Australia, one of the countries opting for the ACs.
To capture the scale of planned portable air-conditioning use at the games, The Washington Post sent inquiries to 20 of the largest competing nations. Among the eight that responded, all — including the United States — said they were planning to use portable ACs in some or all of their athletes’ rooms.
Others with air-conditioning plans include Great Britain, Canada, Italy, and — to a limited degree — Germany, which says ACs will be used for participants in just a handful of sports.
If Japan, which did not respond to The Post’s inquiry, goes through with its own air-conditioning plans — announced at a news conference last December — then every Group of Seven country aside from the host will be using the units……
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...is-olympics-no-air-conditioning-village-2024/