The interior view of the Main Media Center for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing. Photo courtesy Chinese foreign ministry website
Beijing: In less than 20 days, the curtain will rise on the Beijing Winter Olympics. The beautiful scroll of a green Olympics is gradually rolling out with more splendor to be revealed. Juan Antonio Samranch, Chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has already hailed the coming event as the “greenest Games”.
However, there are concerns about the Omicron threat and so far China has discounted any serious threat to public health during the Winter Olympics, despite conceding today that the country is confronted with a new surge of COVID-19, “especially the “tsunami” caused by the Omicron variant”.
Sporadic individual cases of the Omicron variant have been reported in Tianjin as also in the Haidian District of Beijing. In response, China claims comprehensive and effective measures have been taken. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian acknowledged today the spread of Omicron in Tianjin and Haidian, but stressed that the Chinese government and people have put in place the comprehensive and effective dynamic zero-COVID policy. “You can rest assured that there will be sound epidemic prevention measures for the Beijing Winter Olympics,” Lijian told journalists here.
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Meanwhile, as Samaranch said, one of the most distinctive features of this Beijing Winter Olympic Games is green and environment-friendly. All 26 venues in the three competition zones will be powered 100% by green energy for the first time in history, which means that Beijing will save 4.9 million tonnes of standard coal and reduce 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
The green electricity for the Winter Olympic venues comes from Zhangbei in Hubei Province. There is a folk saying in Zhangbei that “The gale blows once a year, lasting from spring to winter.” China has put in place the Zhangbei renewable energy flexible DC grid test and demonstration project to convert all that wind energy into clean electricity and transmit it to the three competition zones in Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou through the northern Hebei grid. Besides the Olympic venues, it also lights up numerous households in Beijing. It is a story of lighting up Beijing with Zhangbei wind power!
Lijian said it was fair to say that China has fully acted on the philosophy of hosting a green Olympic Games. “This is not only part of our effort to deliver on the promise of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, but also offering China’s solution, wisdom and contribution to the world on how to approach the relationship between man and nature as well as development and environmental protection,” he said. He claimed that the charm of a green Beijing Winter Olympics was also manifested by China’s “sincere vision” of “Sustainability for the Future”. “I’ll give you another example. If you visit the Winter Olympic Forest Park in Zhangshanying, Yanqing district, you will see that many trees have their own QR code showing their unique identity. If you scan the codes, they will tell you that the trees were transplanted there when the competition venues were being built in Yanqing. With ex-situ conservation as a form of ecological compensation, we have kept the competition zone green and added a vivid footnote to the philosophy of hosting a green Olympics,” he said.
– global bihari bureau
