Climate risk is having a profound impact on major sporting events, from the excessive heat and pollution concerns at the Paris 2024 Olympics to the extreme weather of the 2024 Euros in Germany. Could summer events be shifted to the autumn to ensure athlete and spectator safety? Maria Antonia Sunyer Pinya, of EcoAct, investigates.
This year’s Olympics saw an increased focus on sustainability and legacy including dedicated planning documents to bolster the Games’ environmental resilience against natural and man-made risks.
The events of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 – where several athletes became unwell due to heat stress – were already a wake-up call about how climate change is affecting everyone – even elite athletes.
UEFA took a similar approach for the Euros, elevating sustainability to an unprecedented level of importance.
A decade in the making
In 2015, Paris embarked on an ambitious plan to turn climate threat into opportunity. To improve the city’s resilience, it has taken a holistic and inclusive approach with flexible, ingenious and efficient solutions to tackle climate change, air pollution, water and river related risks.
For the Games, the city invested heavily in efficient, low carbon transport links and an athlete village cooled by a geothermal system. Data simulated the impact of different weather conditions on the village to ensure athlete comfort. $1.5 billion was also invested in renovating sewer infrastructure and upgrading the city’s wastewater treatment plants to improve water quality in the river Seine.
Despite best efforts, water quality remained inconsistent, and several swim sessions were cancelled or postponed. Many athletes felt the effects of the hot weather, with competitors in sailing and BMX donning ice vests. Tennis players were offered longer set breaks, while warm-ups were kept short in dressage to protect horses and riders.
The events in Paris are not unusual. Earlier in the year, Euro 2024 fan zones in several German cities were closed temporarily due to storms and hurricane speed winds, and visitors were asked to stay at home.
The future for sport
We have reached a point in time where serious changes must be introduced to protect athletes, spectators and staff at major events. The cost of climate inaction outweighs the cost of mitigation and adaptation.
The climate ‘fixes’ of the past must be resigned to the history books. The use of artificial snow in the Winter Olympics, for example, requires vast amounts of water and electricity. At the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, up to 90% of the snow was man-made due to limited snowfall, a practice which will seriously impact the sustainability credentials of future sporting events.
And so there must be a new approach to climate risk and resilience. World-class events attract millions of people at stadiums and engage billions more via TV or online. A failure to adapt to climate risk would create significant reputational damage and revenue loss.
In future, a robust climate risk analysis and adaptation plan should be used to calculate financial, operational and reputational costs, along with the benefits of adaptation.
For example, the EcoAct Climate Risk Platform, which analyses exposure of physical sites to climate change hazards, suggests that Los Angeles could become increasingly exposed to heatwaves.
In a low-carbon trajectory, the city could see up to 49 days with temperatures above 40°C by 2030 and up to 53 days in a high-carbon trajectory. This is in stark contrast to the 20 days it has typically experienced in past decades.
Of equal concern is the prevalence of wildfires; between 1996 and 2021, summer fires in California increased five-fold compared to 1971-1995.
Studies highlighted a strong correlation between climate change and increased summer temperatures. Not only do wildfires pose an immediate threat, but their intensity creates vast plumes of smoke causing health complications for people even hundreds of miles away.
In preparation for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, every proposed site venue must be individually evaluated for potential risk, ranging from extreme heat and drought to wildfires and air pollution.
Our Climate Risk Platform simplifies this by assessing climate risk against 40 indicators to create a global or regional overview of business exposure. This can be filtered by site characteristics such as typology, business criticality, or preparedness, and each asset can have its own comprehensive climate risk profile, together with impacts and recommended adaptations.
In future, major summer events like the Olympics, World Cup, Commonwealth Games and Wimbledon may need to move to spring or autumn, depending on climate risk profile.
Organisers and value chain partners would need to adopt flexible adaptation pathways and embrace climate uncertainty by reviewing and adjusting decisions to ensure robust action.
From Paris to LA
For now, the LA Olympics organisers are committed to a ‘car-free’ and ‘no-build’ Olympics – two big green ticks in the sustainability box. To ensure the Games’ enduring legacy, the city will greatly benefit from this heightened focus on long-term resilience.
Los Angeles County’s goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, and the Olympics could play a key role in accelerating awareness and climate action.
If done properly, it will bring businesses together across the value chain, supporting all stakeholders to better understand their climate risks and take proactive steps toward mitigation and adaptation.
