The row over air conditioning in the athletes' village at the Paris 2024 Olympics demonstrates the scale of the challenge we face in gaining acceptance for sustainable building technologies, writes Smith Mordak as part of our Olympic Impact series.

The Paris Olympic Village air-conditioning (AC) debacle is a perfect illustration of the barriers to climate action.
If you've not heard, essentially, the athletes' village was designed and built to be cooled via a geothermal cooling system that pumps water from 50-70m below the surface to keep the athletes cool, so long as they follow a few simple rules such as keeping window blinds shut during the day. The system is similar to the district cooling network that's successfully been keeping buildings and landmarks across Paris cool even despite ferocious heatwaves. This story is one that's playing out every day
Unfortunately, faith in this technology wavered, and many teams, including those from Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and USA, elected to buy portable air-conditioning units to supplement the geothermal cooling.
This was met with dismay as it tipped the playing field in favour of the wealthier nations' competitors, as those that had the budgets to cover the additional AC units enjoyed high-energy active cooling, and those that didn't suffered hotter temperatures.
The Olympics is an extraordinary event, but this story is one that's playing out every day. It typifies climate inaction: a low-emissions solution is propo...