Paris Olympics 2024: The U.S. Olympic team among seven countries to bring their own AC units to Paris

The U.S. Olympic team is among the seven national federations that will supply air conditioning units for their athletes at the Paris Olympics 2024, despite organizers' environmental plans to cut carbon emissions.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada, and Britain were among the other nations with plans to bring AC units to the Paris Olympics 2024. Reportedly, Japan has also considered bringing units for its athletes.

On Friday, U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland stated that while the U.S. team hails the efforts aimed at reducing carbon emissions, the federation would be supplying the AC units to enhance the athletes’ performance capabilities.

“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance. In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability,” Hirshland said as quoted by Fox News.

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Paris Olympics 2024 organizers to cool rooms with cooling pipes

It’s worth noting that the Paris organizers have plans to cool rooms in the Village, where more than 15,000 Olympians and officials will stay for the duration of the Paris Olympics, using a system of cooling pipes underneath the floors.

The average high temperature in Paris on August 1 is 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit). The Paris organizers aim to keep the rooms between 23-26 degrees (73-79 degrees Fahrenheit). The rooms will also have fans.

“I want the Paris Games to be exemplary from an environmental point of view,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said.

According to the International Energy Agency, fewer than 1 in 10 European households have air conditioning units, and the numbers in Paris are lower than that.

The study further stated that of the 1.6 billion AC units in use across the globe in 2016, more than half were in China (570 million) and the United States (375 million). The entire European Union had around 100 million.

“It’s a high-performance environment,” Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Strath Gordon explained to The Post.