By Bethany Beers

On July 24, 2024, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Salt Lake City (SLC) was selected to host the 2034 Winter Olympics. This is a return to Salt Lake City 32 years after first hosting and building many of the venues that’ll be reused in 2034 and a huge win for sustainability, reducing the amount of new construction needed. Brendle Group supported the Olympic Bid Committee in the endeavor to secure this win, building on our prior greenhouse gas accounting and sustainability work for the ski resorts and communities involved.

Olympic Sustainability History

The global impact of the Olympics is significant – nearly 3,000 athletes from around the world attended the 2022 winter games in Beijing. Though spectators weren’t allowed at the 2022 games, the 2018 Winter Olympics sold 1.1M tickets to spectators from around the world. Because of the tremendous impact, the IOC started requiring formal sustainability plans in bids in 1994 and the ‘environment’ was officially added as the third pillar alongside ‘sport’ and ‘culture’ in a 1996 Charter Amendment.

SLC’s 2034 Sustainability Approach

The SLC Olympic Bid Committee focused on the core sustainability vision of the Olympic Movement: Hosting resilient games with minimized carbon emissions in alignment with science-based targets and creating lasting solutions. The sustainability approach consists of three key focus areas: to reduce, compensate, and influence.

  1. Reduce and Minimize: Salt Lake City will strive to reduce emissions and waste to the extent feasible, thereby aligning with local, state, and national goals as well as international efforts including science-based targets (SBTs) and the Paris Agreement. SLC-UT, based on its best interpretation of SBTs, aims for a 70% reduction in emissions by 2034.
  2. Compensate and Remove Carbon: Salt Lake City in 2034 will strive to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than the Games project emits. Some emissions are avoidable, and any remaining emissions will be compensated for via permanent removal of emissions from the atmosphere through technical, credible and verified means.
  3. Influence: Salt Lake City can leverage reduction and compensation methods and the international spotlight to develop high profile showcases of best sustainability practices and influence the growth of sustainability practices across the globe. SLC-UT will develop an education and communications strategy to support this goal.

To determine these focus areas, Brendle Group was enlisted by the Olympic bid committee to create a Carbon Impact Assessment for the games. We followed the Carbon Footprint Methodology for the Olympic Games, released by the International Olympic Committee in 2018. The Carbon Impact Assessment identifies what activities generate the most emissions, who owns the responsibility for them, and what scope category the emissions belong to. The Carbon Impact Assessment for the 2034 Winter Games identified the areas of greatest emissions production and identified preliminary strategies for mitigating emissions and eliminating their creation. One of the largest strategies of mitigation for the Salt Lake City region is reuse of the existing facilities from the 2002 Winter Games. Additional mitigation strategies include electrifying transportation infrastructure, improving waste management, energy efficiency in building operations, carbon neutral supply chain, and adding renewable resources to the supplied grid energy. Electrification will be an important strategy for the games and provides co-benefits to the region that will long outlast the games.  The analysis also identified additional reduction efforts through influence-based strategies, meaning emissions that will be generated by the games but not directly under the control of the Olympic Organizing Committee (such as, airline travel to attend the games as a spectator).

Main components of the Games carbon management plan

The 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris gave us some great examples of some of the same strategies SLC could implement including electric transportation, a non-gas “torch”, reuse of facilities, and modular venue components that can be disassembled and reassembled in a new location, benefitting lower income areas of Paris by providing recreational facilities such as climbing walls, skate parks and swimming pools. The organizers created a circular economy plan, with end-of-life homes for 90% of the 6 million items identified for reuse by the time the games started, and final deals for the rest under negotiation.

Increased Visibility for Local Ski Areas

Ski areas are used to the visibility, and sometimes scrutiny they, receive for their impact on the environment – both real and perceived – and it’s ingrained in the ski culture to be good stewards of the land. Bringing the Olympics back to Utah in 2034 will most likely increase this scrutiny, but ski areas throughout the region are already utilizing tools like the National Ski Area Association (NSAA) Climate Challenge to calculate their emissions annually and track progress towards their goals. Read Five Lessons from the NSAA Climate Challenge for more on this topic. For example, ski areas in Utah are reducing their impact by:

  • purchasing clean electricity through the utility renewable power programs, helping to eliminate 100% of Scope 2 emissions,
  • reducing emissions from employee commuting by creating car and van pooling programs,
  • creating focused waste diversion programs that have diverted over 700,000 pounds of waste from landfills in the last ski season alone,
  • swapping grooming equipment for more efficient units and using satellite snow measuring technology to improve grooming operations.

Voluntary challenges like the NSAA Climate Challenge help drive innovation and elevate solutions that are working, creating opportunities to move the entire ski industry forward.

Though the Olympic bid award is still fresh, we expect to see exciting changes and unique opportunities arise for the Salt Lake City area as they prepare to be on the world stage again. The Games are often an accelerator for innovations in many areas. Look for innovation at its peak in the coming years: new and improved transportation, electric vehicles and buses, and a circular economy starting to blossom as the Games approach.

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About the AuthorBethany headshot – Bethany brings over 20 years of experience in management, team development, and engineering consulting. As the Director of Engineering, she uses innovation and critical thinking to deliver solutions that are technically feasible, financially viable, and implementation ready. Bethany has expertise in sustainable design and energy efficiency consulting, decarbonization planning, building system commissioning, and capital project management.

Prior to joining Brendle Group, Bethany worked in both consulting and the private sector. She led large capital projects in the role of owner for New Belgium Brewing helping the organization live its values in green building and climate action while growing its Fort Collins campus and expanding to Asheville, NC. She’s also an experienced project manager serving clients with aggressive net zero carbon goals. She brings a robust and varied skillset in project management and capital planning for project implementation, complemented by a deep understanding of complex building systems, energy efficiency, and the unique challenges associated with building decarbonization.