The U.S. Olympic team and some other countries' national sports federations will provide air conditioning to their respective athletes at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, despite Olympic organizers' environmental plans to reduce greenhouse emissions. carbon.
Organizers have promoted plans to use a system of refrigeration pipes under the floors to cool rooms in the Athletes' Village, which will house more than 15,000 Olympic athletes and sports officials during the Summer Games, according to The Associated Press.
United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that the U.S. team appreciates efforts to address sustainability, but that the committee would provide air conditioning units for U.S. athletes during the Summer Games.
“We will have air conditioning in the village rooms,” Hirshland said. “We have great respect for the work done by the Paris Organizing Committee in particular, and their focus on sustainability. And I know there have been a lot of questions about the consistency of that, along with air conditioning.”
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The United States Olympic team and several other national sports federations will supply their athletes with air conditioners at the Paris Olympics this summer. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, File)
“As you can imagine, this is a period of time where consistency and predictability are critical to Team USA's performance,” Hirshland continued. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that athletes felt was a critical component in their ability to perform.”
Other countries planning to bring air conditioners to the Paris Games include Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Great Britain, The Washington Post reported. Japan has also reportedly considered bringing in units for its athletes.
The average high temperature in Paris on August 1 is 26 degrees Celsius or 79 degrees Fahrenheit, and the goal of organizers' environmental plan is to keep venues between 23 and 26 degrees Celsius or 73 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit. The rooms will also have fans, as planned.
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A bedroom in the Olympic village is pictured in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, Wednesday, February 28, 2024. (AP)
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“I want the Paris Games to be exemplary from an environmental point of view,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said of plans for the Olympic Games.
Fewer than one in 10 homes in Europe have air conditioning, and the number of homes in Paris that do have it is even smaller, according to the International Energy Agency. The agency also said that of the 1.6 billion air conditioning units used worldwide in 2016, more than half were in China (with 570 million) and the United States (375 million), while the entire European Union It had around 100 million.
Additionally, France has also had to spend $1.5 billion to clean up the Seine River in preparation for the Summer Games aquatic events, as the river remains too polluted to host the sports, according to Newsweek.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
