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Staging The Green Olympics

Many businesses and government agencies around the world are trying to do their part to contribute to environmental sustainability. So it should come as no surprise that the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) has dubbed the 2008 Summer Games, which open today, the "Green Olympics."

Efforts to make this a particularly energy-efficient Olympics have been under way for years. The International Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD), a nonprofit organization in Gaithersburg, Md., that works on green-related projects around the world, has coordinated with U.S. government agencies, consultants, and officials in China to integrate zero net emissions, community sustainability planning, and green buildings into the venue construction plans for the 2008 Olympics.

ICSD says officials in Beijing are committed to a zero net emissions Games, and the city is attempting to minimize emissions of air pollution associated with hosting the Olympics. Every little bit will help, as Beijing has been plagued with smog problems.

Those who are managing IT systems at the Beijing Olympics also are doing their part to create an energy-efficient Games.

"One of the aims of the IOC [International Olympic Committee] is to stage the low-carbon Olympic Games in the broadest sense, from helping people plan their journey to the Games through to how the Games are broadcast around the world," says Jeremy Hore, chief integrator at Atos Origin for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Atos Origin, which says it has sustainability principles built into its own business operations, is overseeing the IT infrastructure at the Games in Beijing.

One of the key green IT efforts at the Beijing Olympics has been to consolidate the number of servers and data centers needed to run applications, in order to reduce energy consumption during the events.

Also, for the first time since the company began managing IT at Olympics events, Atos Origin will provide its Commentator Information System (CIS), which delivers event results to broadcasters, in a "remote mode." This will enable journalists to cover Olympic sporting events from the journalists' base locations (for example, NBC from the United States).

"This will marginally reduce the number of media on site," therefore saving on transportation and accommodation and the associated energy costs, Hore says.

The green initiatives being implemented for the Olympics in Beijing will be further developed and enhanced for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 and the Summer Olympics in London in 2012, according to Atos Origin.

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