Doha (AFP) – As the World Athletics Championships get underway in Qatar on Friday, the environmental cost of holding a top-tier sporting event in a sweltering desert has been thrust into the global spotlight.
Organisers insist they have taken steps to mitigate the impact of the athletics showcase and that the far larger 2022 football World Cup, also due to be held in the Gulf monarchy, will be carbon-neutral.
But climate activists are sceptical, warning that events which rely heavily on energy-hungry air conditioning, desalination, single-use plastics and inbound air travel can never be truly green.
“Air conditioning around stadiums is not environmentally sound, it will only add to the emissions,” warned Greenpeace executive director Zeina el-Hajj.
Doha’s Khalifa stadium, the venue for the World Championships, will be maintained at a pleasant 23-25 degrees Celsius while the outside daytime air temperature exceeds 40 degrees and humidity hovers above 50 percent.
The sophisticated system is being held up by Qatari authorities as proof they will be able to keep venues for the World Cup at comfortable temperatures, despite concerns over the impact of the Gulf climate.
Greenpeace says the cooling systems, which is replicated at the seven other World Cup stadiums, could “become more sustainable” if they were powered by solar energy, which Qatari authorities say they want to use.
“None of that is currently running in Qatar yet,” said el-Hajj.
– ‘Good amount of energy’ –
The man behind the stadium cooling systems, engineering professor Saud Abdul Ghani, acknowledged that they used “a good amount of energy” and would rely on polluting backup diesel generators in the event of a power cut.
But he insisted that reducing stadium temperatures resulted in just one-fifth of the emissions produced to cool similarly-sized airport atriums.
Ghani said that even though all of the eight stadia, including Khalifa, will have open roofs during the World Cup, the cooled air would not be squandered.
“Pumping out cold air is a bit crude… God will just make that disappear,” he said.
“We pump the exact amount of cold air into the exact place — then recycle it all.”
Qatar’s ruler vowed this week to put the country and its high-profile sporting events on an environmentally-friendly track.
“We are committed to organising an eco-friendly tournament and the first ‘carbon-neutral’ tournament through the use of solar energy in stadiums and the use of energy-efficient cooling, lighting technology and water,” said emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani at a UN event on climate change in New York.
from World Soccer Talk https://ift.tt/2nHX00H
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