US & World

Olympics Not Likely to Be Carbon Neutral Despite Russian Promises


The Russian government has its sights set on the most environmentally friendly Olympics in history — Games so sustainable that officials and media alike are chattering about the possibility that they won't leave a carbon footprint.

Carbon neutrality is a lofty (some say unattainable) goal that would mean all emissions related to construction, waste, planes, refrigerants and much more would be counteracted because the Russian government had found a way to offset them. And whether it's been by design or by more conservative claims blown out of proportion, the idea that these Olympics will be carbon neutral is now cropping up around the globe.

The Sochi Olympics, which take place from Feb. 7 to Feb. 23, would be the first to go carbon neutral if that were the case, as this tweet from the head of the Russian Olympic committee suggests:

As far as realizing that goal, officials have announced plans for carbon neutral construction, and the government partnered with the Dow Chemical Company, which has promised to neutralize transportation-related emissions. Government officials have promised to make factories more environmentally friendly and to refurbish construction-ravaged forests with new trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Neutrality is notion with more than a few holes, though, and environmentalists are casting doubt on both the idea of total carbon neutrality as well as the Russian government's more sober promises around transportation and construction.

"There's almost no chance these Olympics are going to be carbon neutral," Robert Engelman, president of the WorldWatch Institute, an environmental research organization, told Mashable.

Allen Hershkowitz, Ph.D., told Mashable something similar. He's a senior scientist at the National Resources Defense Council, which advises organizations such as Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association on their environmental policies.

"Carbon neutral is an aspirational concept," Hershkowitz said. "It should never be used in a descriptive way."

How could they be so sure?

According to Hershkowitz, the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere during construction and the Games themselves is practically incalculable, because the gas leaks into the air in so many ways. How can you completely offset something you can't reliably measure? He then rattled off a series of questions that the Russian government has not publicly addressed but, he says, must be answered before it can claim any kind of carbon neutrality.

Is it going to offset the leakage of refrigerants? How much waste is being consumed, and what kind of materials is that waste made of? Is the food waste going to be composted? Is the uneaten prepared food going to be donated? What kind of chemicals will workers use to clean facilities? What kind of fuel are the construction vehicles using? What kind of fuel do the snow-making machines use?

On top of all that, there are the planes. Dow Chemical, the "official carbon partner of Sochi," has said it will offset travel emissions, which are estimated to hit around 160,000 tons.

Hershkowitz said this is actually one of the easier emissions impacts to measure, because it is possible to approximate how much CO2 seeps out of planes. Below is a chart that does just that, and here is the full-screen version.

The graphic shows how much carbon dioxide is emitted when an average plane flies to Sochi from any nation participating in the Olympics, though the actual number of flights will be a lot more than one per country.

Russian officials and Dow Chemical will supposedly attempt to offset Olympic emissions in part by upgrading energy-producing facilities with "energy efficient and low-carbon technologies in the areas of infrastructure, industry and agriculture," according to the company. The upgrades are said to include the ability for many facilities to run on natural gas, and Dow Chemical also plans to help restore damaged Russian ecosystems by supporting the Bikin Tiger Conservation Project.

Doubts, however, surround these plans because they are both vague and likely to take years. Environmental groups also say committees for previous Olympic Games, such as London in 2012, had been more forthcoming about what carbon dioxide emissions they could measure and what they could offset.

Plus, the Russian government has not been particularly reliable in this area. It also promised to not illegally dump construction waste, which can result in carbon emissions depending on what the waste is made of, but construction companies have been caught doing so several times. Officials have also said little about emissions that will come from food waste, construction waste, chemicals, refrigerants, and more.

And environmentalists continue to fret over how much construction has had to be done in the wetlands of Sochi (as opposed to the urban sprawl of previous Olympic venues). Russian officials have had to build more and unearth more ground than they did in London or Vancouver, and experts are saying such efforts have released more carbon dioxide into the air than past Olympics.

Mashable asked Russian officials some of these questions to see how much of the Olympics' carbon footprint they had measured. But no one replied to multiple emails, and the Russian government has not released any detailed plans that cover which carbon dioxide emissions it has measured and which it can offset. That's in line with its response, or lack thereof, to environmental inquiries from publications such as Outside, the Associated Press and others.

Even if the Russian government won't engage environmentalists on its strategy to offset the Games' carbon dioxide, they would like it to at least publish some specific details about how it plans to go about it.

"I'm not trying to attack Russia," Hershkowitz said. "I'm just saying [transparency] will affect what we know about the environmental integrity of the Olympics."

But that is not appearing likely, so environmental experts are left with guesswork.

"My gut feeling is the organizers will try to make it carbon neutral just by buying offsets," Igor Chestin, head of the World Wildlife Fund in Russia, told Mashable.

That could mean planting trees, purchasing energy from a wind farm, or outfitting more buildings with the ability to run on natural gas.

"One way people claim carbon neutrality is by saying they will offset emissions," Engelman said. But the problem with offsets, he continued, is environmentalists aren't sure how much carbon dioxide they cancel out, or how to measure it.

One of the most common ways to try to offset emissions, for example, is to plant trees, which consume carbon dioxide to live. But how many new trees do you plant to offset a certain amount of carbon dioxide, considering the difficulty of calculating emissions in the first place? On top of that, forests die, burn down and get bulldozed, so there's no guarantee they consume the amount of gas for which they were intended.

"Carbon neutral is a kind of sustainababble," Engelman concluded. "It's just next to impossible to be carbon neutral in this world."


Image: AFP/Getty Images

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