All Olympians attending the 2024 Paris Games will not have access to air conditioning at the Olympic Village, as more sustainable measures are in place.
Following a push from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the Olympic Games will not be exempt from her action plan to tackle climate change in the region by 2050. Rather than living areas at the Olympic Village having air conditioning, a cooling system will be used to maintain the temperature of the apartments.
Naturally cold water from 70 meters deep will be circulated in the flooring to bring temperatures down. However, the Olympic Committee of both Greece and Australia have confirmed that they will bring their own cooling systems this summer, with the latter spending $150,000 (£118,400) on equipment.
Yann Krysinski is in charge of the venues and infrastructure at the Paris Games and claimed that air conditioning is not necessary due to their sustainable technology. "We designed these buildings so that they would be comfortable places to live in in the summer, in 2024 and later on," Krysinski told Reuters.
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"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, and the facades, the insulation is really efficient."
Once the Olympians have left the village following the conclusion of the Paris Games, it's planned that 6,000 people will live in the area. "I want the Paris Games to be exemplary from an environmental point of view," said Paris Mayor Hidalgo, who wants to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make the City of Lights carbon neutral by 2050.
Hidalgo is working alongside Laurent Monnet, who is in charge of the green transition at Saint-Denis City Hall, the northern suburb in Paris where the main Olympic Village will be located. Monnet has claimed that with the cooling system all rooms will be six degrees cooler than temperatures outside. Although Australia and Greece have already committed to self-fund their own systems, Monnet wants athletes to set a good example.
Paris wants the athletes to set an example to future residents (Getty Images)"We need athletes to set an example when they use the buildings," Monnet said. "We can build the most virtuous village we want, it is also the use that will be made of it that will weigh on our carbon footprint."
Monnet has been backed by running icon Eliud Kipchoge, a two-time Olympic champion and marathon world record holder. Kipchoge supports the sustainability plan as the Kenyan continues to be a loud voice from the sporting world when it comes to climate change and helping the environment.
"It’s a good thought, because we all need to reduce our carbon," Kipchoge said in an interview with the AP. In response to some committees ignoring the efforts made by environmentalists, Kipchoge added: "We are all going to go through the same scenario."
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