Will the “Green Olympics” in Beijing really be green?

China wants to use the February Olympics to show its green credentials, but the environmental cost of games that will rely on artificial snow has been a cause for concern.

It is difficult to independently verify what China has said about the Games, which begin on February 4, and environmentalists told AFP they fear retaliation from authorities if they analyze Beijing’s ecological goals.

This is what is known:

– What does China promise? –

China has pledged to use only wind, hydro and solar energy, despite the fact that two-thirds of its economy depends on coal.

The city of Zhangjiakou, one of the three Olympic venues, installed wind plants on hundreds of hectares to produce 14 million kilowatts of electricity, similar to the energy that Singapore produces.

Authorities also covered mountain slopes with solar panels with which they hope to generate another seven million kilowatts.

The Beijing Games organizing committee told AFP that China built a “power plant that takes energy generated from renewable sources, stores it and transmits it to all venues.”

He indicated that this should guarantee an uninterrupted power supply.

But China’s rapid growth has relied on coal-fired power for decades, and the country has struggled to shed its dependence on that polluting fuel.

Beijing is building more coal-fired plants than the rest of the world combined, a plan that threatens to derail its decarbonization goals and the global effort to tackle climate change.

– Will pollution affect the Games? –

In an attempt to clear smog from the Beijing skies ahead of the Games, coal ovens in 25 million homes in northern China were replaced by gas or electricity last year. Tens of thousands of factories were fined for exceeding emission limits.

Steel plants around Beijing were forced to cut their production in half.

The number of heavily polluted days in the city fell to 10 in 2020, compared to 43 in 2015 according to the environment ministry, although Beijing’s air quality typically exceeds World Health Organization parameters.

A 2015 Greenpeace assessment found that “the great lesson of the 2008 Olympics (in Beijing) … has been to understand that moving polluting industries from Beijing to neighboring provinces does not improve air quality.”

– And the transport? –

Some 655 hydrogen buses will be used to transport athletes and officials during the Winter Games, according to the state news agency Xinhua.

The organizers noted that 85% of the vehicles used in the Games will use electricity or hydrogen to reduce pollution.

Since only local spectators will be able to attend games due to the pandemic, emissions caused by flights will be much lower than the average for some Games.

The coronavirus pandemic also sharply reduced the number of international flights to China.

– Where will the snow come from? –

Outdoor events in the mountains of Zhangjiakou and Yanqing, north of Beijing, will depend entirely on artificial snow.

Artificial snow has been used to varying degrees since the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, USA.

China estimates that it will need around 185 million liters of water to produce the snow required for events such as skiing and snowboarding, according to a 2019 forecast from the country’s planning office.

The water would come from giant reservoirs in Zhanjiakou, “but it will be less than 1% of the city’s water supply,” Zhang Li, a member of the organizing committee for the Games, told the state-run Global Times newspaper.

Snow makers have said that the water used to make snow does not contain “chemical additives” and that when it melts, the water will naturally return to the ground.

– Are the Winter Games viable? –

The city of Beijing suffers from a lack of water, with only 185 cubic meters of liquid per person each year for its 21 million inhabitants.

That’s less than a fifth of what is necessary by UN standards.

Since Beijing was chosen to host the Games, the local government started a construction frenzy.

Data from the national sports administration indicates that China now has 654 ice rinks, three times more than in 2015, and the government plans to build another 400.

But environmentalists warn that promoting winter sports that rely on artificial ice and snow can exacerbate water shortages in places with limited supplies.

Carmen de Jong, a geographer at the University of Strasbourg, said that “holding games in a site or region without snow is unsustainable because it is intensive in the use of water and energy, damages the soil and causes erosion.”

“Creating events without the primary resource on which it depends is not only unsustainable, it is irresponsible,” he said.