All informed, the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics are estimated to trigger the lack of 5.5 sq. kilometers of snowpack and 34 million metric tons of glacial ice. With out the emissions brought on by the occasion’s three major sponsors, these numbers can be a lot decrease: 2.3 sq. kilometers of snowpack and about 14 million metric tons of glacial ice.
That’s in response to a January report from the New Climate Institute, which labored with Scientists for World Accountability and Champions for Earth to find out the environmental impacts of the 2026 Winter Olympics and whether or not or not the staging of the Video games was detrimental to the winter sports activities most impacted by local weather change. What they discovered was that whereas the Video games themselves prompted appreciable carbon emissions, the emissions brought on by three of of the occasion’s major sponsors—Italian power firm Eni, automaker Stellantis, and ITA Airways—might probably give the occasion a a lot bigger carbon footprint.
Selling these firms on the Video games, the report’s authors argue, is estimated to bump up emissions “attributable to elevated gross sales of excessive carbon items and companies” that these sponsors supply.
The report claims that Eni is answerable for greater than half of complete emissions caused by the highest three sponsors, adopted by Stellantis and ITA. Whereas acknowledging the difficulties concerned in getting stable estimates on the businesses’ carbon emissions and the scale of the Olympic sponsorship offers, the report claims that the extra enterprise these firms stood to achieve from their involvement within the Video games might trigger 1.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equal emissions. That’s 40 % greater than the Olympics’ direct footprint, which is estimated to be about 930,000 metric tons.
This implies an extra lack of 3.2 sq. kilometers of snowpack and greater than 20 million metric tons of glacial ice, including to the two.3 sq. kilometers of snow and 14 million metric tons of ice already impacted by the Video games themselves. Put one other method, this report claims that the Winter Olympics are contributing to a decline within the viability of the very sports activities they have fun.
In response to the findings, an Eni consultant informed WIRED that the report offered a biased estimate of the corporate’s contribution to the emissions produced by the Video games. The corporate additionally famous “greater than 90 % of the fuels provided by Eni to energy the Video games are derived from renewable uncooked supplies,” including that its assist of the Video games is essentially centered on the availability of power services and products and doesn’t generate extra climate-altering actions.
ITA responded to a request for remark by noting that “sustainability is a cornerstone of ITA Airways’ growth technique” and pointed to its newer extra fuel-efficient fleet and plans to make use of sustainable aviation fuels. The Milano Cortina 2026 Basis, contacted immediately in regards to the Video games’ environmental affect, declined to remark. Stellantis didn’t reply to requests for clarification on its sustainability initiatives associated to the Olympics.
Winter sports activities are changing into more and more uncommon attributable to their vulnerability to the consequences of worldwide warming. The numbers testify to an emergency already underway. Prior to now 5 years, Italy, the Video games’ host nation, has misplaced 265 ski resorts. France, which is able to host the 2030 Winter Olympics, has seen greater than 180 resorts within the Alps shutter. Fifty-plus ski lifts and cable vehicles have closed in Switzerland. With every iteration, the Video games develop into more and more depending on artificially made snow.
Out of the 93 places with the infrastructure essential to host the Winter Olympics, solely 52 of them will probably be “climate-reliable” by the 2050s if international emissions proceed at roughly their present charges, in response to a 2024 examine commissioned by the Worldwide Olympic Committee. By the 2080s, that quantity drops to 46.
