2050Today Members

IOC – International Olympic Committee

Footprint and emissions by scope

The 2050Today carbon footprint takes into account the reported emissions generated by the activities of the institution over one year and was established according to international standards by Climate Services. Mobility takes into consideration business travels and commuting (on a survey basis). The CO2 impact of food includes the catering of the institution and individual consumption (on a survey basis) during working hours. Nevertheless the collected data of the 2050Today members resulting in each carbon footprint are not yet fully standardized nor entirely complete. Data collection is being progressively harmonized and improved. Therefore direct comparisons between tCO2 / employee among institutions – be it in general or per sector – are not yet possible nor relevant.

According to ISO 14064, the distribution of emissions is done by scopes.

Scope 1 represents direct emissions linked to the consumption of fossil fuels.

Scope 2 represents indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by the reporting company

Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain (i.e. purchased good or services, business travel, employee commuting).

IOC specifics

In addition to the 2050Today reporting Footprint, the IOC reports data on building construction, external data hosting and freight.

Total footprint reported by the IOC (Lausanne operations) for the average emissions per year (2016-2019) : 33’259 tCO2e

Building construction : Only taken into account during the construction years of our headquarters. Corresponds to embodied CO2 spread across the 3 construction years in proportion of the construction spend.

External data hosting : Electricity use in data centres used by IOC Lausanne-based entities, outside of their own premises.

Freight : Shipping of material to host cities for IOC institutional events or during Olympic Games time.

Mobility : It includes in addition to trips by IOC Lausanne staff, trips paid by the IOC for IOC members, consultants and guests.

Food and Hotels : It includes food served at the IOC HQ (staff and guests), food served at the TOM Café of the Olympic Museum (staff + external clients including private events). It covers in addition to hotels used by IOC Lausanne staff, hotels fees paid by the IOC for IOC members, consultants and guests.

The weight of this CO2 footprint

If we were to give a concrete weight to this carbon footprint, it would represent the weight of the following number of elephants  :

(average weight per elephant : 5’000 kilos) 

1 107 Elephants

The rate at which nature can absorb this amount of CO2

This amount of CO2 was emitted in one year. How many century-old cedars does it take to absorb this carbon footprint in the same amount of time ?

(a 100 year old cedar absorbs on average 25 kg of CO2 per year)

221 400 cedars are required