With 2024 playing host to several global summer sporting spectacles the environmental challenges facing major sporting events are clearer than ever. From rising temperatures and pollution concerns at the Paris 2024 Olympics to extreme weather at the 2024 Euros in Germany which disrupted fixtures and impacted the fan experience, climate risk is having a marked impact.
With average summer temperatures and heatwaves continually increasing, could we see future summer events hosted in autumn instead to ensure athlete and spectator safety? Maria Antonia Sunyer Pinya, Managing Consultant and Expert in Physical Risks at EcoAct, discusses climate risk, adaptation and mitigation.
This year’s Olympic Games in Paris saw an increased focus on sustainability and legacy including a dedicated section in planning documents to bolster the environmental resilience of the Games against both natural and man-made risks. For some, the events of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 – where several athletes became unwell due to heat stress – were a wake-up call to how climate change will impact all of us – 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 threats into opportunities. To improve the city’s resilience, it has taken a holistic and inclusive approach with flexible, ingenious and efficient solutions at its heart, tackling climate change, air pollution, water and river related risks, terror and social and economic inequality.
For the Games specifically, the city invested heavily in new, efficient, low carbon transport links as well as an athlete village cooled by a geothermal system. To assess climate risk, data was used to simulate 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 the water quality of the river Seine.
Despite best efforts, water quality remained inconsistent. With athlete safety paramount, several swim sessions were cancelled or postponed. Elsewhere, athletes felt the effects of the hot weather. In sailing and BMXing, athletes donned ice vests to counteract the hot weather, bigger breaks between sets were offered to those competing in tennis, while in dressage, warm-ups were kept short to protect the horses and riders.
The events in Paris are not unusual. Earlier in the year in Germany, officials for the Euro 2024 ordered fan zones in Dusseldorf, Dortmund, Cologne and Gelsenkirchen to be closed temporarily due to storms and hurricane speed winds, with visitors asked to stay at home.
The future of major sporting events
We have reached a time where we must change the way we protect athletes, spectators and staff members; the cost of climate inaction now outweighs the cost of mitigation and adaptation. Future organisers must be switched on to the safety issues posed by soaring summer temperatures and extreme weather events. Equally, the climate “fixes” from the past must now 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 could seriously impact the sustainability credentials of future sporting events.
This year’s events open the door to a new approach to climate risk and resilience. World class events attract millions of people in person and engage billions more via the television or online. As such, a failure to adapt to climate risk would create significant reputational damage leading to revenue loss in addition to the impacts on health and safety of spectators and athletes. For future events, a robust climate risk analysis and adaptation plan should be completed to calculate the climate-related financial, operational and reputational costs to the event as well as the potential benefits of acting on adaptation.
As an example, insights from the EcoAct Climate Risk Platform, which analyses the exposure of organisations’ 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 a temperature 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 the summer burned area in California increased five-fold compared to 1971 to 1995 with studies highlighting a strong correlation between climate change and increased summer temperatures. Not only do wildfires pose an immediate threat, but intense wildfires – such as those witnessed this summer across Canada – create vast plumes of smoke that can cause health complications even for people hundreds of miles away.
With several venues proposed for the Games in Los Angeles in different locations, every site will need to be evaluated individually against a range of potential challenges from extreme heat and drought to wildfires and air pollution. The EcoAct Climate Risk Platform simplifies this by assessing climate risk against 40 indicators. This creates a global or regional overview of a business’ exposure which can be filtered by site characteristics such as site typology, business criticality, or preparedness. Each asset can be zoomed in on to reveal a comprehensive climate risk profile, impacts and adaptation recommendations. It is only through this level of detail that businesses will be able to identify and prioritise mitigation and adaptation measures while maximising additional environmental and societal co-benefits.
In future, the Summer Olympics and other major events like the Football World Cup, Commonwealth Games, Wimbledon and the Euros may need to be held in spring or autumn, as host cities in hot climates weigh the cost of adaptation and safety against their climate risk profiles. This shift would require the organisers and value chain partners to adopt flexible adaptation pathways, enabling them to embrace climate uncertainty by reviewing and adjusting their decisions to ensure that actions taken are robust.
From Paris to LA
For now, plans are underway in Los Angeles for the 2028 Games, with organisers committing to a ‘car-free’ and ‘no-build’ Olympics – two big green ticks in the sustainability box. To ensure the legacy of the Games, a heightened focus on long-term resilience would greatly benefit the city in the face of increasing climate risk.
As in Paris, key adaptation and mitigation measures could support Los Angeles to become a more liveable city. With a goal for Los Angeles County to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, the Olympics could play a key role in accelerating climate action, helping the region to meet climate targets, while managing climate risks and enhancing resilience. If done well, this journey will bring along businesses from across the value chain, supporting all stakeholders to better understand their climate risks and take proactive steps toward mitigation and adaptation.
