Reasons to Be Cheerful
Summary
Paris has been preparing for the 2024 Summer Olympics for a decade. In the final days leading up to the big event, organizers readied for the Seine to host a dramatic opening ceremony, during which athletes will float down the river on boats, with the Eiffel Tower laying backdrop to it. One ambitious goal among these preparations: to host the first carbon-neutral Olympics in modern history.
In a climate-friendly effort to keep athletes and attendees cool and comfortable throughout the event, the Olympics are foregoing traditional air conditioning in exchange for an alternative cooling system — one which will use river water from the Seine to cool all buildings affiliated with the event.
The system driving this operation is called district cooling, and its technology long predates this summer’s Olympics. The first system of its kind was built in 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut, and has since grown to be one of the largest in the world. The city’s gas company at the time had connected to all the interstate pipelines, bringing a surplus of gas to the city, which went unused in the summer. So a district energy system was created through which gas could be used to chill water and cool buildings in the summer, and steam for heat in the winter.
Created in 1991, Paris’ district cooling network is already Europe’s largest, currently serving more than 2,000 buildings in the south of the city, and its recent growth to meet the Olympics’ climate goals has cemented its lead in the rankings.
ENGIE, the company behind the cooling system, is using water from the Seine and recovered heat from a data center to heat the Olympic pool. ENGIE has also created a cooling system — separate from the central system in Paris — for the Olympic Village, which will turn into housing after the Olympics conclude. With sustainability in mind, the Village was constructed in a way that generates 50 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than standard construction, using wood rather than steel in small buildings and low-carbon concrete in larger ones. The housing will also include affordable units.
“District cooling is a central plant or plants that produce chilled water,” explains Rob Thornton, president and CEO of the nonprofit International District Energy Association. “There is a network of insulated pipes in which water is pumped (generally underground), and then the connected buildings receive cold water, which flows into a heat exchanger. The cold water absorbs the heat from the space, and the warmer water flows back into the central plant. It’s a closed loop.”
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