GE warns of green Olympics awareness gap

Businesses have been urged to boost efforts to highlight the green credentials of the Olympic Games after a survey found the vast majority of people have failed to understand how major sporting events are used as a testing ground for emerging clean technologies.

A report published by Olympic Games sponsor General Electric (GE) today warned of a consumer awareness gap about the benefits of the technologies used in the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games, including innovations such as smart metering and electric vehicles.

The Future Poll survey of 4,000 people in Brazil and the UK found that just five per cent of people in the UK and 17 per cent of Brazilians thought the Olympics will improve their country's green credentials or reduce its environmental impact.

The report argues that the Olympic Games can provide a testing ground for businesses to tackle the kind of sustainability and infrastructure challenges that are expected to become commonplace as cities expand over the coming decades.

However, while 61 per cent of people in the UK would describe the Olympics as a "force for good", just 12 per cent thought the technologies used at the Games will have a lasting impact.

Similarly, 76 per cent of those in Brazil said the Games were a "force for good", but just a quarter thought the technologies deployed to support the event will be useful by wider society.

Mark Elborne, chief executive and president of GE UK, said businesses should view the Games as a microcosm of a new generation of smarter and cleaner cities.

"The Olympic Games focus attention on the wider infrastructure issues we will face in the future and how we could tackle them," he said. "By providing a highly concentrated environment – a microcosm of our cities and communities – it allows us to test technology such as smart meters, clean energy and electric vehicles.

"The Games also help us understand the difficulties in deploying such technology and inform how we might approach such challenges on a wider scale."