Paris launches green Olympics

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♻️ This week’s sustainability news

Paris is aiming to deliver the greenest Olympics ever

What’s happening: The Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games kicked off on 26 July and will run until 11 August, followed by the Paralympic Games from 28 August to 8 September. The organisers have planned for all electricity running the Games to be 100% renewable electricity from wind or solar power sourced in France. They have re-used venues as much as possible including those from their previous Games held in 1900 and 1924, as well as the World Cup in 1998. The few new venues have been constructed with wood, low-carbon concrete and recycled materials, including thousands of seats made from recycled plastic. Paris 2024 has promised to serve twice as much plant-based food and use half as much single-use plastic to lower carbon emissions and reduce waste.

Why it’s happening: In 2012, the London Olympics pioneered a new international certification standard. They provide guidelines for any large event to make more sustainable choices, from construction to catering. Winter sports are in danger because of climate change. Warmer temperatures and changing weather patterns are making winter sports seasons shorter. For example, the 2022 Beijing Winter Games had to make fake snow for skiing. The International Olympic Committee is waiting to choose future Winter Games host cities for 2030 and later because they are unsure about the future of winter sports. But there are also issues during the summer, as global warming fuels extreme heat and storms that can affect the quality of the competition and the health of the athletes and spectators. The organisers of the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games in 2021 moved the marathon to Sapporo, which is over 500 miles north of Tokyo, to help athletes run in cooler weather during a heat wave. They also postponed some events to avoid the extreme heat and heavy rain.

Why it’s important: The Olympic Games have provided Paris with the opportunity to accelerate the green transformation of their city. They have created 250 miles of new bike lanes; extended the Métro network (which is ongoing); cleaned up the Seine; and planted 300,000 new trees. Instead of spending money on building large new venues that often have trouble filling seats and paying for heating after the Games, Paris used most of its budget to improve what it already had. The legacy of the Paris Games appears more promising than most as a result of their focus on sustainability. It also provides a blueprint for future host cities of the Olympic Games.

📖 Read the full report: Paris 2024 Sustainability & Legacy

🌐 Travel to Chiapas, Mexico

Mesmerising Misol-Há

Enjoy this amazing one-drop waterfall: It’s located only a 20-minute drive from Palenque in the Chiapas region of Mexico. Read about our experience staying there overnight in a cabana in our new article.

😇 People doing great things

The first U.S. climate president

Reflecting on a president’s term in office: Joe Biden announced that he will not run for president in 2024 after facing pressure from Democratic voters and lawmakers. He has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Biden has actually done more to support clean energy than any president before.

On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden's first day in office, he showed he was serious about fighting climate change. He rejoined the Paris Agreement, which former President Donald Trump had left in 2017. This was a positive move from Biden, who had promised to focus on climate issues during his campaign. No other U.S. president has done as much to change federal policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Biden has also helped bring the production of important clean energy technologies to the U.S. and is boosting the country's struggling manufacturing sector.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), approved in 2022, is a key climate law in the U.S. It provides over $1 trillion in tax credits and billions in grants to support solar and wind power, as well as technologies to reduce industrial pollution. Most of these incentives will stay in place for a decade after the law passed. This gives U.S. clean energy developers, investors, and manufacturers a clear and stable plan for the future, which was missing in past tax-credit policies. This law has quickly made a big impact. Over $100 billion has been invested in building factories in the U.S. that produce things like solar panels and electric vehicle batteries. This has created over 90,000 jobs, mostly in states led by Republicans. Clean energy projects are at an all-time high, and emissions from the power sector are starting to go down.

There had been another legislative win before the IRA too. An infrastructure law passed in 2021, which provided billions of dollars for installing EV chargers and set aside $5 billion for electric school buses. It also created big projects to develop new climate technologies like carbon removal and clean hydrogen. President Biden helped get the law through a divided Congress, even gaining some Republican support.

Biden’s administration has also taken new steps to enforce the rules that climate experts say are necessary to limit the uncontrolled use of fossil fuels that warm the planet. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken the lead on this.

The EPA has made new rules to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations, a gas that greatly affects short-term global warming. The EPA updated the Obama administration’s clean power plant rule, which was previously rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, to cut emissions from power plants by the mid-2030s. This supports the ongoing shift to clean energy. Biden’s EPA has also set new vehicle emissions standards to help reach his goal of having half of all light-duty vehicles sold in the U.S. be electric or plug-in hybrids by 2030. Shortly after, it also introduced strict new standards for heavy-duty vehicle emissions.

The Biden administration has combined social justice with its clean energy and infrastructure plans through the Justice40 Initiative. This initiative ensures that at least 40% of the benefits from federal clean energy investments go to disadvantaged communities affected by pollution. Billions of dollars are being directed to these communities to make solar panels cheaper, improve energy efficiency, and fix environmental damage caused by industrial and fossil fuel pollution.

Thanks to Biden's clean energy efforts, the U.S. is now in a better place to meet its climate goals from the Paris Agreement, although it's not quite there yet. However, this progress could be at risk in the next election if former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, regains the White House at the expense of Kamala Harris.

⭐️ Weekly inspiration

Solar to fill half of electricity demand in 2024 and 2025

Global electricity demand rising: At its fastest rate in two decades, but solar is on track to meet half of this demand according to International Energy Agency.

Tesla’s battery business is booming

Despite contracting EV business: Tesla more than doubled its deployment of battery storage in Q2 of last year while revenue from energy generation and storage doubled year over year to just over $3 billion in the quarter, contributing nearly 12 percent of their revenue for the period.

Puerto Rico is planning its biggest solar plant

Along with battery storage: A new $861M federal Department of Energy loan guarantee will finance new solar and battery storage facilities on the southern coast of the island under the name of Project Marahu.

Startup finds a way to recycle 99% of used solar panels

A way to avoid solar panels ending up in landfill: Venice-based 9Tech has a smart way to recover 99% of the components found in solar panels without creating any harmful waste that occurs with current recycling methods.

California releases proposal for offshore wind by 2035

State wants to build industry from scratch: The California Public Utilities Commission announced its intention to set an initial target of 7.6 gigawatts of offshore wind for the state to procure by 2035, the first step towards fulfilling the state’s long-term plan of getting 25 gigawatts of wind energy online by 2045.

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