Opinion piece by Christine Nellemann, Dean of Sustainability, Diversity and International Cooperation at DTU. Published in Frederiksborg Amts Avis on 09.08.2024.
In recent weeks, the Paris Olympics have filled the airwaves around the world. You couldn't wish for a better opportunity to brand your city and country. And of course, the organizers of the Paris Olympics have taken advantage of this.
In a larger narrative about this year's Olympics being the most sustainable Olympics ever, the organizers highlight a number of climate initiatives that I, as Dean of Sustainability at DTU, am excited about.
These include beds made from recycled cardboard, audience seats made from recycled plastic, the decision not to build new buildings and a 100 per cent connection to the electricity grid instead of polluting diesel generators. What a great story!
And yet - it's far more complex than that. The announcements from Paris have been met with criticism from both scientists and NGOs. The criticism relates to the organizers' main message that the many initiatives, combined with the purchase of carbon offsets, mean that this year's Olympics will be half that of previous years. The criticism is that this is an impenetrable claim. That buying carbon offsets cannot simply 'erase' the CO2 you emit. And that the reductions you boast about only represent an insignificant drop in the overall global carbon accounts.
I find it frustrating that initiatives that could inspire change around the world are drowned in a negative debate. It dents credibility and leads to accusations of greenwashing. At worst, climate criticism of the Olympics can serve as a scare tactic for companies considering investing in more sustainable technologies. After all, why spend money on CO2 reductions if the story turns negative?
A long journey
At DTU, we work extensively with sustainability and how we talk about it in a fact-based way. Because it's complex.
We have a Centre for Absolute Sustainability, whose purpose is, through mathematics and facts, to analyze the degree of sustainability in a company or a given product by looking at the production journey from cradle to grave. The centre helps companies in Denmark and internationally to achieve absolute environmental sustainability. This means that nature's tolerance limits are used as a yardstick for how much the company's products and actions can be allowed to impact the climate.
Achieving absolute sustainability is a long and demanding journey. A process with many steps along the way that I believe should be openly presented as inspiration for others, even if the goal has not yet been reached.
At DTU, for example, we're not there yet, but we still tell the world about the many initiatives we're proud of. For example, all new infrastructure on campus is built with sustainability as a guiding principle. This means, for example, that DTU's newly built centre for the development of climate-friendly power-to-X technologies, the Climate Challenge Laboratory, is constructed from cross-laminated timber, a renewable natural resource that requires less energy to produce than concrete and steel.
We also explain how a light rail is being built on our campus in Lyngby, which we have used as an opportunity to expand and improve the bicycle infrastructure to promote green mobility. DTU also says that all facilities are available as a living laboratory where students, researchers, companies and authorities can develop and test new sustainable technologies. Finally, we announce that we plan to establish our own heat pump because it can reduce the climate impact by covering 30 percent of DTU's annual heat consumption.
Drop the unproven claims
Going back to the Olympics as an example, I think the organizers could have done the same. In other words, they could have simply talked about the individual initiatives.
After all, it's not the initiatives themselves that are being criticized. Rather, it's the difficult-to-understand claim that the measures, together with the purchase of carbon offsets, mean that the Paris Olympics has halved its climate impact.
If the maths had been presented freely for that particular claim, or not made at all, I believe the reception of the important messages would have been quite different.
The climate-friendly initiatives could have served as inspiration for others and effective branding of Paris as host city. Therefore, facts, honesty and transparency are essential when we talk about sustainability as a concept.
After all, it's a waste of effort if solid work is criticized because it is decorated with green plumes that cannot fly.
