Olympic Games delivers blueprint for low carbon construction

The body in charge of organising London's Olympic and Paralympic Games has released its first full sustainability report, detailing how the massive construction effort is already providing a blueprint for future low carbon building projects.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Locog) yesterday published the report analysing a range of sustainability issues tackled during 2010, including cutting embodied carbon, addressing supply chain issues, and examining the committee's failure to meet its renewable energy target.

Locog chairman Sebastian Coe hailed the success of the committee's sustainability efforts. "Before these Games, no one had cleaned two million tonnes of contaminated soil on-site," he said. "No one had tried to calculate the complete carbon footprint of a Summer games. And no one had built an 80,000-seat stadium as light in structure and environmental impact as ours."

David Stubbs, Locog head of sustainability, told BusinessGreen the procurement process had already encouraged companies to develop increasingly sustainable ways of building large projects.

He said the scale of the challenge has been particularly demanding, given that Locog is a temporary organisation working from a standing start.

"Most organisations establish green targets which they build up incrementally, but we've had to start from scratch and work in a very limited timeframe. If we can do that then surely the rest of the supply chain should be able to do something similar," he said.

As outlined by the Games' green watchdog earlier this month, Locog reported it is on track to meet all its sustainability targets bar the goal to deliver 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources.

Achievements include the completed velodrome, which has cut carbon emissions over and above 2006 building regulations by 31 per cent, and saved more than 85,000 tonnes of embodied carbon through efficient building design and material selection.

The Olympic Delivery Authority is also on track to reduce demand for drinking water by 57 per cent using reduction and substitution measures, including a new water recycling treatment centre.

However, the report also highlighted an additional 10 per cent of predicted carbon emissions on top of 2005 estimates, caused by more accurate calculations and the decision to order a temporary power generator to replace the scrapped wind turbine.

Stubbs said Locog has stepped up efforts to cut carbon emissions since realising its footprint would be higher than initially expected.

"The latest results have led us to look much more closely at venue energy use," he said. "Solutions we are considering implementing relate to direct energy conservation such as stripping out unnecessary heating, ventilation and air conditioning, installing real time energy trackers to improve management efficiency, trying to make better use of mains power rather than generators, and looking at cleaner fuels for generators."

For the first time, Locog detailed how it could have better planned the Games to meet its renewable energy target, saying it would have been wiser to start with an overall carbon target instead of focusing on specific technologies.

"For major one-off events, especially in urban areas, installation of renewable energy sources is not necessarily the best approach to take," the report said.

Stubbs also insisted that while disappointing, the loss of the wind turbine was not a "severe blow" to the sustainable Games programme.

"People are distracted from the bigger story that we really are taking sustainability seriously and moving into new areas that no previous Games have looked at," he said. "To use a sporting analogy, you can win the league without needing to win every match."