Pictures: London Leaps Hurdles in Green Olympic Games Bid

Cycling Track: Gearing Up for Efficiency

Photograph courtesy Justin Setterfield, LOCOG

Cyclists whiz around the Velodrome's Siberian pine track at speeds in excess of 70 kilometers (43 miles) per hour at a Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) test event earlier this year.

All of the wood used to build the low-slung building—including the 56 kilometers (35 miles) of pine that went into the 250-meter track—was certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The building's stellar energy-efficiency performance is due to its compact design, which minimizes the volume of conditioned air in the cycling arena.

(Related: "Pictures: In Search of Green Air Conditioning" and Quiz: What You Don't Know About Air Conditioning)

The design uses natural ventilation for passive cooling, and optimizes natural lighting. Potable water demand was reduced 70 percent through a rainwater harvesting and supply system, efficient plumbing fittings and waterless urinals. The design team also reduced the size and depth of the foundations, and by relying on a lightweight cable system for support, saved an estimated 1,000 tons of steelwork.

Throughout Olympic Park, organizers used half the materials that were needed to build the Olympics site in Beijing for the 2008 games.

(Related: "Pictures: A Rare Look Inside China's Energy Machine")

Published July 25, 2012

ArcelorMittal Orbit: Steeling the Show

Photograph by Tim Hales, AP

Spiraling 114.5 meters (376 feet) into the air in London 2012's Olympic Village, the red and silver tubular steel ArcelorMittal Orbit tower is both an abstract sculpture and a viewing platform that affords panoramic views of the host city.

Resembling a rather nightmarish roller-coaster, the 35-story tower divided art critics and gave London newspapers a new target for their punning headlines: "Eyeful Tower," anyone?"

The Commission for a Sustainable London doesn't think the tower fits the green ethos of the games, though, calling it pointless and chiding its use of energy-intensive steel (although 63 percent of the steel was recycled).

The public response? Tickets to tower during the games are sold out.

(Related: "Four Ways to Look at Global Carbon Footprints")

(Related Video: "I Didn't Know That--Recycling Steel")

Published July 25, 2012

Olympic Torch: New Design, Old Fuel

Photograph from Reimschuessel/Splash News/Corbis

Gold and crafted from aerospace-grade aluminum, the 800-millimeter (31-inch) Olympic torch for the 2012 London Games weighs a mere 800 grams (1.8 pounds), making it the lightest ever. The hope was that the British-designed and engineered torch also would break precedent as the first to be lit with carbon-neutral fuel, but that was not to be.

Olympics sponsor EDF Energy vowed back in 2007 that it would develop a green torch fuel made from miscanthus, or elephant grass. But EDF was never able to deliver on the biofuel.

(Related Quiz: What You Don't Know About Biofuel)

So for the relay across the United Kingdom by 8,000 torchbearers that started 70 days ahead of the games, the Olympic flame was lit by the same fuel that has been in use since the 2000 games, a mix of propane and butane.

Shaun McCarthy, chairman of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, was not pleased. "The excuse of 'We ran out of time' is not acceptable," he said.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by the relatively clean-burning fuels is minute, he admitted, but if a carbon-neutral fuel had been used, "the power of the message across the globe would have been highly significant."

(Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")

Still, there have been worse torch fuels in Olympics past. For the 1996 Atlanta games, the organizers used propylene, which burned brightly, but released copious carbon and smoke. Perhaps the biggest torch debacle was in the 1956 games in Melbourne, Australia, where a fuel mix of magnesium and aluminum emitted large clumps of burning debris as the torch entered the stadium. Now, that's entertainment!

As for EDF Energy, which boasts it is the largest low-carbon electricity provider in the United Kingdom (thanks to a technology that would be an unsuitable torch fuel-nuclear power), it is metering energy use at the games. Viewers can watch the kilowatt-hours in real time online at http://www.edfpowerthegameslive.com/

(Measure your own carbon footprint with the Personal Energy Meter)

Published July 25, 2012

Energy Centre: Cooling From Heat

Photograph by Julian Finney, Getty Images

Brown and squat—it's 18 meters (59 feet) high—the Olympic Park Energy Centre incorporates windows at ground level to allow passersby to see inside the power plant.

The center uses combined cooling, heat, and power (CCHP) technology fueled from both natural gas and biomass (wood chips) to cut back on carbon emissions. CCHP plants use the excess heat from generating heat and electricity to also run air conditioning systems. The waste heat is cooled in an absorption chiller to produce chilled water for cooling.

(Related: "Tapping into the Electric Power of Heat" and "KPMG Captures Heat for Data Center Cooling")

After the games, the plant—owned and operated by GDF Suez—will provide heat, power, and cooling to new buildings and communities planned for the development area. An adjacent Edwardian building will house a visitors center.

Although natural gas generates electricity with half the carbon emissions of coal, the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 in its June report noted that it is still a fossil fuel. "With hindsight, the option to award a 40-year energy contract based on a fossil-fuel source could prove to be an ill-advised decision," said the report.

Published July 25, 2012

Olympic Park: Woodland Legacy

Photograph courtesy David Poultney, Olympic Delivery Authority

A serene, green corner of a newly created 250-acre parkland affords a lovely view of the sloping, saddle-shaped Velodrome at the Olympic Park in London's hardscrabble East End. It's the largest urban park to be built in the U.K. in more than 100 years, and combines woodlands, wetlands, and meadows sown with perennials.

(Related: "Pictures: Twelve Car-Free City Zones" and "The City Solution")

More than 1,500 indigenous trees—including wild cherry, ash, aspen, and English oak—and 300,000 wetlands plants were used to create the park, which is also a new habitat for a variety of fauna, ranging from kingfishers to bats to grass snakes.

Until recently, this land had been an industrial wasteland. More than 2 million tons of earth were treated at an on-site "soil hospital" to cleanse it of contaminants—including oil, arsenic, and lead. Organizers say that the games' legacy will be the regeneration of a derelict part of London.

Published July 25, 2012

Olympic Stadium: Wrap Controversy

Photograph by Michael Regan, Getty Images

A security guard gazes up at the 487 million pound ($753 million), 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium built for the London 2012 Games.

To help keep it featherweight, it was constructed with lightweight steel, and its roof is fashioned from PVC. It also has a rainwater collection system that provides water for flushing toilets and irrigation.

(Related: Water Footprint Calculator)

But the building is not without controversy. The 7 million pound ($10.85 million) wrap cladding the outside of the stadium was made and paid for by Olympics sponsor Dow Chemical. Activists decry Dow for its link to one of the world's worst industrial disasters, the deadly 1984 chemical leak in Bhopal, India. (The factory was owned by a subsidiary of Union Carbide, which was purchased by Dow in 2001. The Indian government has sought additional compensation from Dow, which has refused, saying the claims were settled by the predecessor company.)

(Related Photos: Kickoff Time for Green Stadiums)

The recounting of the Bhopal tragedy by the critics of Dow's Olympic sponsorship has doubtless undercut some of the value of the $100 million deal. Dow removed its logo from the decorative stadium wrap, which the company had hoped would showcase its environmentally friendly plastic. The phthalate-free wrap is made from 336 individual pieces of fabric, each 25 meters (82 feet) long and 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) wide. Dow says the material was made partly from recycled content and will be repurposed.

Published July 25, 2012

Efficient Cars: But Please Take the Tube

Photograph from Melpressmen/Demotix/Corbis

The German automaker BMW supplied 4,000 cars, including these parked in the Bloomsbury district, to the London Olympics Games.

Environmental activists have criticized use of the luxury vehicles to ferry VIPs—including Olympics officials, organizers, medical officers, and media—to and from the games in dedicated lanes to avoid London's often traffic-clogged streets.

(Related Quiz: What You Don't Know About Cars and Fuel)

BMW and organizers say that while the cars are powerful, they are also super-efficient. In the U.K. new car emissions on average are 138 grams of CO2 per kilometer, which works out to about 17 kilometers per liter or 40 miles per gallon of gasoline. In contrast, the BMW Olympic fleet's average is a mere 116 g CO2/km, or more than 20 km/l or 47 mpg. The fleet's environmental profile was boosted in part by the inclusion of 240 electric vehicles or hybrids. 

(Related: "Pictures: Cars That Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel")

The CSL credited London for devising a transportation plan that will require most visitors to the games to use public transportation—though it says it will keep a "close eye" on things to ensure that the first " 'public transport games' becomes a reality."

During the games, ridership on London's extensive underground subway and train system is expected to swell from 12 million to 15 million journeys per day.

(Video: "I Didn't Know That—The London Tube")

(Related: "Formula One Legend Murray Sets Course for Energy-Efficient Car Design")

Published July 25, 2012

Next: Photos: Kickoff Time for Green Stadiums

Illustration courtesy HH-Vision and Albert Speer & Partner

Published July 25, 2012