Green Olympics yield mixed record on green building

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BEIJING - It's been billed as the "Green Olympics", but do theshowpiece venues that will host the Games' key events live up tothe theme?

The record is mixed, experts say, with the best venues for theBeijing Games setting a standard for energy-efficient buildingwhile others betray the promise of environmental sustainability.

In the end, much was left to the developers, with few mandatoryguidelines set by Olympic organizers, meaning they had littleleverage to impose consistent standards.

"The intention is always positive, but if you don't give peoplesome mandatory parameters on which they have to work, then youallow them to make shortcuts," said Theodore Oben, head of thesport and environment program at the United Nations EnvironmentProgram.

"A lot of the building and facilities are developed by contractors... If the parameters are not mandatory, then the contractors willhave either to do as much as you want or more, or they may makeshortcuts if they want to save money," he said.

The National Stadium, known as the "Bird's Nest" for itslatticework of interwoven steel, and the National Aquatics Centre,or "Water Cube", the rectangular swimming venue that sits by itsside, are considered among the world's most architecturallyadventurous new buildings.

But are they the most green?

Nest of steel

"It's an iconic structure, but a green building it ain't," RobertWatson, CEO of green building consultancy EcoTech International,said of the Bird's Nest.

The stadium features non-flush toilets equipped with sewagetreatment systems, a rooftop photovoltaic system with a capacity togenerate 130 kilowatts of power, and facilities to collect 58,000cubic meters of rainwater annually.

But to Watson the structure itself, which used some 42,000 tons ofsteel, is the problem.

"The fact that it uses 10 times the materials of a normal stadium,any green virtue is inundated by that," he said.

"Ninety percent of the structure does nothing but hold itself up,"said Watson, who founded the Leadership in Energy and EnvironmentalDesign (LEED) rating system for green buildings.

Experts say the Water Cube fared better.

The $143 million venue's playful facade, which evokes giant soapbubbles, is made of ETFE, a durable plastic that allows naturallight into the building and is a better insulator than glass.

"It's super lightweight, so it allows us to cut a lot of thestructural load out of the building as a result," said HaicoSchepers, leader of the sustainable buildings group at Arup, theengineering firm that was a partner in the Cube's design.

The daylight that the material conducts into the building is alsoharnessed to heat the swimming pool, reducing the pool enclosure'senergy consumption by 30 percent.

Part of the building's success, said Schepers, was that its greenaspects were not afterthoughts, but integrated into the design.

"What we tend to find with sustainability is if you make it anadd-on item, there's a large risk it gets costed out through theprocess," he said.

No ostentation

Premier Wen Jiabao himself has urged energy efficiency in theOlympics venues as environmental sustainability becomes a theme ofChina's leadership, keen to ward off civil discontent sparked bywidespread degradation.

"There will be no talk of extravagance or ostentation in organizingthe Olympic Games. We should save every drop of water and everyunit of electricity in the construction of the Olympic venues,"local media quoted Wen as saying last year.

For its part, Beijing's organizing committee has stressed theenvironmental aspects of the Olympic village, which include solarheating to supply hot water to its more than 16,000 residents, arainwater collection system and a heating and cooling system thatwill cut electricity by 40 percent by using recycled water.

But experts say there have also been near-misses and lostopportunities.

One of the buildings where Chinese athletes are training was builtwith timber from an uncertified source -- meaning it could havecome from protected forests -- because Beijing's organizingcommittee had little control over the contractor, Oben said.

The design for the basketball venue initially included giant LEDscreens on each side, a plan Watson said would have used as muchenergy in one project as several thousand Chinese families.

Still, despite some missed opportunities, environmentalists hopewhere things went well they will provide a template for whatrapidly growing China could do in future.

"I think the ability to point at some of the innovations in thesefacilities, or the mistakes, will have some impact down the road,"said Watson.

"Certainly the best buildings in China are equivalent to the bestbuildings anywhere."