"Surpassing the Torch"
Written by Kim Gladow | Photos by Sita Thompson



When the Grecians held the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, issues such as the event’s carbon footprint probably never made the planning agenda.

Times have changed, however, and in an effort to host the most environmentally-sustainable Olympic Games to date, the Vancouver Olympic Committee is designing venues that stretch the limits of sustainable technology.

Through a variety of land assessments and the use of energy-efficient systems, organizers hope to conserve Vancouver’s natural environment and offset the negative effects of such an enormous building project.

One venue in particular, the Whistler Sliding Center, challenged the committee to find innovative solutions to reduce the center’s energy consumption and land destruction. The sliding center will be the site for the luge, bobsled and skeleton competitions in the 2010 Winter Games.

"I’ve been to four other sliding venues around the world, and the Whistler Sliding Center is leaps and bounds above those tracks in terms of its environmental impact," said Laurenz Kosichek, the sliding center’s project director from Stantec Architecture.

Construction on the outdoor venue began in June 2005 and finished in October 2007, formally opening to the public this fall. The 4,757-foot track surface is covered in 1 to 2 inches of solid ice, allowing competitors to reach speeds of more than 80 mph. The Whistler Sliding Center is the fastest sliding venue in the world, Kosichek said.

Because the entire track must be refrigerated at all times, energy consumption was a major concern in designing the sliding center, said Maria Hudspith, senior consultant for Hollyhock Leadership Institute. Hollyhock worked with Vancouver’s Olympic committee to create a sustainability agenda for the games based on feedback from more than 20 environmental organizations.

According to the committee’s 2006-07 Sustainability Report, Olympic organizers collaborated with Stantec and Cimco Refrigeration to devise methods of making the sliding center as energy efficient as possible.

With 9,000 feet of pipe running below its icy track, the sliding center uses a massive ammonia refrigeration system that is both efficient and sustainable, said Gary Kuzyk, manager of Cimco Refrigeration.

"An ammonia system is a perfect fit for the sliding center because it offers a very good net refrigeration effect compared to Freon refrigeration," Kuzyk said.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Freon was the standard chemical agent used in most cooling appliances up until the mid-1990s. Within the last decade, however, studies revealed that its high chlorofluorocarbon content caused ozone layer depletion and the coolant was quickly phased out.

While the production of ammonia releases CO2, an article in the "Journal of the American Chemical Society" states that ammonia gas itself has no impact on global warming.

Hamid Azarnosh, a Cimco engineer, explained that the ammonia is pumped through the long pipe system in liquid form. Through compression, it evaporates and absorbs significant amounts of heat, leaving the surrounding pipes cool. The overall heat transferring process is highly efficient, Azarnosh said.

Even so, the energy required to keep the ice frozen is approximately 17 million British thermal units per hour a measurement equal to maintaining 14 frozen ice rinks, or 3,500 average household refrigerators.

In an attempt to reduce the venue’s total energy use, the sliding center employs a revolutionary heat-recycling system called EcoChill. The system is designed to recover the heat energy used to cool industrial-sized ice venues, Kuzyk said.

The EcoChill technology at the sliding center captures 10 percent of the heat waste from the track and transfers it through pipes to the base of the run, where it heats the refrigeration plant’s mechanical room and track lodge.

"In some cases it is possible to recover up to 100 percent of the energy used and reuse that," Kuzyk said. "But it has to make sense economically. Every facility has different opportunities for heat recovery."

The Dow Centennial Center, a multi-purpose recreational facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, was one of Cimco’s first refrigeration projects to use EcoChill technology. The center includes two ice rinks, an indoor soccer field and a fitness center with running track, all enclosed within a single 110,000-square-foot facility.

Kuzyk said the venues’ close proximity to one another create a perfect opportunity for 100 percent heat recovery. The heat waste from the ice rinks can be captured and transferred to the soccer field and fitness center without setting up an expensive infrastructure of piping between each arena.

According to Cimco, the amount of energy saved at Dow Centennial Center each year is equivalent, emission-wise, to driving 976 cars from Seattle to New York City.

The Whistler Sliding Center’s isolated location, however, makes it too costly to run piping down the mountain to other Olympic venues that could potentially reuse 100 percent of the track’s expended heat. Therefore, the recovery system at the sliding center only uses 10 percent of the track’s heat waste, Kuzyk said.

Additional energy-saving strategies include the 600 white canvas blinds that line the inner contour of the sliding track to shade the ice from the sun greatly reducing the amount of energy required to keep it frozen. During competitions, venue employees will open sections of the shades by hand as the sun moves throughout the day, said Lana McKenzie, the venue’s tours coordinator. Enough of the track is revealed at one time, however, that spectators will still have a clear view of the athletes during their runs.

McKenzie also explained that the sliding center is painted white to reflect sunlight and keep the track cool.

Before construction on the sliding center even began, the Olympic committee completed a Federal Environment Assessment Review to select the best site for the venue, McKenzie said. Organizers chose a former alpine ski run on Blackcomb Mountain n order to avoid excessive vegetation clearing.

"We tried to be smart about keeping as many pockets of trees as possible," McKenzie said.

According to the committee’s sustainability report, most of Vancouver’s other event venues, such as the Whistler Olympic Park and Whistler Creekside, use similar technology and site selection methods to reduce their environmental impact.

"It’s important to recognize that we are not the first organizing committee for a winter games to put together a program to try and reduce the carbon impact of the games," said Linda Coady, the Olympic committee’s vice president of sustainability. "[Our] program will build on the experiences of Salt Lake City and Torino and add a few new elements."

While Salt Lake City and Torino’s sustainability programs only spanned the 17 days of their Olympic Games, Vancouver’s program began as early as 2003 during the event’s initial planning stages, Coady said.

Of the 96 vehicles that organizers are using for employee transportation, 50 percent are equipped with either hybrid or Active Fuel Management (AFM) technology, according to the sustainability report. AFM allows a vehicle’s engine to temporarily turn off half of its cylinders under light-load conditions to improve fuel economy.

The Olympic committee also moved its main office operations to a new building in east Vancouver, which was renovated to include energy-efficient lighting and an improved heating and ventilation system. Employees at the office are encouraged to bike or carpool to work, Coady said.

When the actual games begin in February 2010, the committee will rely primarily on Vancouver’s mass transit system to transport spectators to and from venues. Most event tickets include transit passes and initiatives have already been established to encourage non-motorized access to specific events.

The cost of hosting such a sustainable Olympic Games is enormous, but the effort attracts sponsors interested in funding specific environmental initiatives, Hudspith said.

According to the sustainability report, many groups, including the United Nations Environment Programme, wanted to help sponsor the event because of the international visibility it gives to ever-growing environmental concerns.

"I think the emphasis on sustainability is a response to changing times," Hudspith said. "There’s an expectation that things are going to be done differently."

London has already announced that one of its goals for the 2012 Summer Olympics is to make its Olympic Park a blueprint for sustainable living. Specific plans include constructing new waste management infrastructure and a commitment to minimizing carbon emissions.

Vancouver is setting an international precedent as far as environmental sustainability goes, Hudspith said.

"These games could have such a potentially big impact," she said. "And I think people recognize that opportunity."

Kim Gladow studies graphic design. She has been published in The Western Front.