As part of their effort to make Paris 2024 the “most responsible and sustainable games in history,” organizers are building something that’s meant to last.
Instead of rooming in apartments tailor-made for them, athletes in the Olympic Village this summer will be living in what will become someone else’s home or workplace. The hope is that the project will provide a model to alleviate a housing crisis in the French capital, where rising interest rates, surging prices and a supply crunch have made it harder than ever to buy or rent a home.
Organizers are also running a handful of experiments to see if new green technologies and construction methods are viable in the real world. The human-caused climate crisis has made heat waves more frequent and intense, and they are starting earlier in the year in many parts of the world.
The most scrutinized innovation will likely be the geothermal cooling system, as athletes in Paris could face the same level of sweltering heat and humidity that broiled Tokyo during the Summer Olympics there three years ago.
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📸: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Joshua Berlinger/CNN
Global construction is moving toward measurable decarbonisation as governments, investors and designers converge on a shared demand for **sustainable construction** aligned with verifiable whole life carbon assessments. The Global Cooling Watch 2025 report reframes thermal resilience as integral to **sustainable building design**, linking passive cooling and district systems to the mitigation of embodied carbon and the **carbon footprint of construction**. Cooling infrastructure in cities and cold chains is being repositioned as a foundation for **sustainable urban development** and equitable growth, particularly in heat‑stressed regions of the Global South where adaptive, **energy‑efficient buildings** define both resilience and economic productivity.
At the COP30 negotiations in Belém, debate continues over equitable financing and governance for **decarbonising the built environment**. Proposals for enhanced UN climate coordination reveal a growing consensus that access to low‑interest or “debt‑free” climate finance is essential for the delivery of **low carbon buildings** and **renewable building materials** in emerging markets. These positions are influencing the investment conditions for **carbon neutral construction** and accelerating interest in circular economy in construction approaches capable of linking finance with verifiable **environmental product declarations (EPDs)**.
Across the private sector, climate accountability is tightening. Despite leaders anticipating tangible losses from inaction, many lack strategies based on **lifecycle assessment** or credible life cycle cost forecasting. Independent auditing guided by frameworks such as **BREEAM v7**, and enhanced **life cycle thinking in construction**, is expected to strengthen compliance, improve **building lifecycle performance**, and expand the uptake of **low embodied carbon materials**.
Technical innovation now defines opportunity as much as policy. Integrating **eco‑design for buildings**, circular construction strategies, and robust **resource efficiency in construction** is positioning the built environment as a central driver of net zero whole life carbon progress. The shift toward **green infrastructure**, **eco‑friendly construction**, and **sustainable building practices** signals a structural recalibration of global supply chains. With **low carbon design**, **sustainable material specification**, and **end‑of‑life reuse in construction** embedded into planning codes, the sector’s transition from declarations to delivery is becoming irreversible.
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