Olympic Games Sustainability Calculator

Since 1992, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has included sustainability as the Olympics's third green dimension. Following several Olympic events with sustainable strategies from the IOC, Müller et al. developed an Olympic sustainability model in 2021 behind "An evaluation of the sustainability of the Olympic Games" as a systematic evaluation of the Olympic Games' sustainability across three dimensions: ecological, social, and economic.

Below, we give you a brief overview of each of the dimensions and what they include.

Ecological dimension

This encompasses the ecological and material footprint of the event, including:

• New construction — Raw materials and resources needed to build or renovate venues.

• Event size — The number of persons accredited and the relation to the venue's use.

• Visitor footprint — Fuel spent on transportation to and from the events or the space required to accommodate all the participants.

💡 The higher the amount of athletes and visitors, the higher the number of flights and other modes of transport that will be used. Visit our flight carbon footprint calculator and car vs. bike calculator to calculate their emissions.

Social dimension

The social dimension of the Olympic Games evaluates how the event accommodates the needs of the host city's population and its impact on marginalized communities:

• Public approval — Public support for the event based on poll respondents.

• Social safety — The number of displaced people due to the event.

• Rule of law — Extent of severity of law and legislation changes.

🙋 Actions such as the banning of demonstrations, drone surveillance, and police or military occupation seen in Paris during the 2024 Olympics, for instance, could substantially lower its social dimension score.

Economic dimension

Economic efficiency measures how effectively funds are used for hosting the Olympic Games:

• Budget balance — Cost overruns and how this amount could fund other projects.

• Financial exposure — Proportion of public funding being used to fund the Olympics instead of other potentially more beneficial investments.

• Long-term viability — Amount of reusable venues, and the avoided 'white elephants'.

🔎 Sochi 2014 was the most expensive Olympic game, estimated to have cost around US$50 billion. How well do you think this game performed in terms of efficiency?

The Olympic sustainability score is based on a 0 to 100 score system where 100 indicates the best possible outcome (e.g., minimal impact or highest efficiency), and vice versa.

Let's take the Barcelona 1992 Olympics as an example:

So, to calculate each dimension's sustainability score, you have to average them out:

...and then normalize the results so that the maximum value for the sum of the dimensions is always 100:

💡 If you need a more detailed explanation of how the normalization is done, check out our mean absolute deviation calculator!

Easy, right? Now, to calculate the total Olympic sustainability score, you add up the numbers for each dimension:

That's it! It wasn't so hard after all. Calculating how sustainable an Olympic game is made simple with our Olympic sustainability games calculator. However, if you are a curious and inquisitive person, you may wonder about the origin of those initial indicator values and how they were obtained.

Well, fret no more, for here comes the answer! To learn more about the scoring system and what criteria were used, check out the study's supplementary materials.

As you select the Olympic Games, the Olympic Games sustainability calculator will tell you whether the event hosts summer ☀️ or winter ❄️​​ games. Notice how this factor affects the rest of the provided information.

Here are some notable differences between the two:

• Winter Olympics have a smaller visitor footprint as there are fewer attendees.

• Winter Olympics require a smaller portion of the urban infrastructure, displacing and affecting fewer people.

• Summer Olympics have more long-term viability in terms of reusable venues.

• Summer Olympics gain more public approval and support possibly due to a higher share of the population involved.

However, this does not necessarily mean that the Winter Olympics are more sustainable than the Summer ones, as Sochi 2014's least sustainable event proves.

Interestingly, Winter Olympics appear to have a lower amount of estimated CO₂ emissions. You can peek at our Keya identity calculator for a more in-depth article on CO₂ emissions from human sources

Now that you know how to calculate the Olympic sustainability score, you may wonder about the Paris 2024 Olympics. How sustainable was the Paris 2024 Olympics?

The Paris 2024 Olympics' sustainability score is 40/100, which is not the best range. This would rank it 11th on the Olympic Games' sustainability podium.

The lowest aspect of the Paris 2024 Olympics is the social score of 26.67/100, mainly because of the eviction of up to 12,000 people and severe legal restrictions. Ecologically speaking, it is expected not to score high due to the enormous event size, the audience, and the conflicting delivery of the surfing events in Tahiti. Lastly, it is doing quite well economically, with venues intentionally built for long-term use in an eco-friendly manner.

Although, considering the estimated CO₂ emission of 1.75 Mt CO₂ eq, the Paris 2024 Olympics will emit the least carbon than any Olympic year in history except for the Beijing 2022 Olympics with an emission of 1.36 Mt CO₂ eq.

Anyhow, it might still be too early to say. Let's be patient and let time do its work.