‘No air-con’ ambition for Paris Olympic village melts away

PARIS – The Paris Olympic Village, which was designed without air-conditioning to reduce carbon emissions, will be fitted with 2,500 temporary cooling units when athletes arrive later in July, organisers said on July 2.

The complex in a northern suburb of Paris was built as a showcase of environmentally friendly technology and has a geothermal cooling system that uses cool water pumped from deep beneath the ground.

However, the lack of air-conditioning has long worried some national Olympic teams, whose athletes are concerned about missing sleep, particularly given the summer heat waves suffered by Paris in recent years.

Organisers devised a compromise that enabled teams to order portable air-conditioning units at their own expense, which can be installed for the duration of the July 26-Aug 11 Games.

“The aim was to provide a very specific solution for athletes, who are facing the match or competition of their lives... and who might have requirements for their comfort and recovery which are higher than in a normal summer,” the deputy director of the Village, Augustin Tran Van Chau, said on July 2.

“Around 2,500 air-cons have been ordered,” he told journalists, during a visit to the Village for the media.

The accommodation complex comprises 7,000 rooms in total, with the geothermal cooling system guaranteeing the temperature to be at least 6 deg C below the conditions outside.

The roughly 40 low-rise towers will host around 10,000 Olympians, and then 5,000 Paralympians during the Paralympic Games from Aug 28 to Sept 8.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who heads the Olympics’ infrastructure group Solideo, had ruled out using portable air-conditioners in the Village in 2023.

“I have a lot of respect for the comfort of athletes, but I think a lot more about the survival of humanity,” she told French radio, France Info, in February 2023.

The influential United States Olympic team are known to have pushed for the provision of air-conditioning.

“We raised a lot of issues early on and they (organisers) have met those needs, like air-conditioning for athletes in the Village,” Rocky Harris, chief of athlete services for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, told AFP in February.

“Those things are important because of sleep, and health and wellness for the athletes.”

The Paris Games are aiming to reduce their total carbon emissions to half the level of previous editions in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

As well as the eco-friendly Village that includes low-carbon building materials, organisers are mostly relying on temporary stadiums or renovated old ones, instead of building new venues.

Only two new permanent venues will be used during the Games.

Meat products have also been reduced on menus at the Village and at sports venues, with the temporary stadium hosting the skateboarding and BMX at Place de la Concorde set to be 100 per cent vegetarian. AFP