Carbon-neutral flame for green Games

By Amol Rajan
Monday, 27 October 2008

With budgets overstretched, private money not forthcoming, and ministers under pressure to find savings in a shrinking economy, Londoners might be forgiven for wishing that they were not hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012 after all.
And while calls for a "Credit Crunch Games", based on the model of the "Austerity Games" London delivered in 1948, have grown louder by the day, so too have concerns about the environmental impact of what cynics deride as a fortnight long running and jumping festival. So the latest wheeze to keep costs down and ensure a greener Games? A carbon-neutral Olympic torch and flame. If adopted, the carbon-neutral torch and flame would signal Britain's commitment to a pledge to make London 2012 the most environment-friendly Games ever delivered.
Most torches contain a canister with a mixture of compressed gases, including methane. Under proposals put to Tessa Jowell, the Games' supremo, today by Wood for Gold, a cross-industry campaign to promote use of sustainable wood, the torch at London 2012 will convert waste wood from the Olympic site into biomass. This biomass will be fuel to generate heat and power for the torch and the flame.
For every tree cut down to provide wood for the Olympic site, three will be planted at one of five Olympic forests by the Forestry Commission. These will take between 30 and 40 years to mature.
And woodchip used as biomass fuel is a sustainable source of energy because unlike fossil fuels, which are a finite resource, wood is infinitely renewable because it requires only light and water to grow. Rather than let wood rot in landfill, London 2012 organisers will use the energy in it as biomass fuel. And the ash waste created by burning the wood as biomass will be reused to create terra preta soils, an ancient method, favoured by indigenous South Americans, of mixing ash with waste to create extremely fertile soils.
Wood forms a huge part of the raw materials being used for construction of the Olympic Park, for stadia, seats, housing, hoardings and billboards. Though it is impossible to know how much wood will be used on the site, or how much of that will end up being waste, approximately £350m of the overall £9.3bn budget for the Games is being spent on timber alone.
Craig White, the chairman of Wood for Gold, said: "London 2012 has been labelled the low-carbon Games, and off-setting is a big part of the planning. But the design we're discussing doesn't just offset carbon, it actually reduces it. That's a pretty exciting prospect".