Researchers commend Beijing for mitigating a wide range of emissions, but say that future games should wean themselves off carbon offsets.
The games’ estimated footprint, equivalent to 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, is a drop in the ocean compared with China’s annual emissions of about 11 billion tonnes, but the value of its achievement is “in demonstrating that broader carbon-neutral activities are possible”, says Michael Davidson, an energy systems researcher at the University of California San Diego.
Yanqing and Zhangjiakou — where snow sports including skiing and snowboarding will be held — are cold in winter, but have very little precipitation, so China has had to pump in water from other regions to manufacture snow. Davidson adds that redirecting renewable energy to the games might be “largely an accounting exercise”, because these renewable resources might have been developed even if the games had not been happening in China. But Liu says that the wind and solar infrastructure, and the grid in Zhangbei, northwest of Beijing, were constructed specifically for the Olympics.
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