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Karma: 0 |  | 2012 Olympic Flame
« Thread Started on Nov 17, 2008, 3:35pm » | |
FLAME TO BE CARBON FREE BRIGHT
The organisers are also looking at a carbon-neutral Olympic flame fuelled by waste wood.
Most torches contain a canister with a mixture of compressed gases, including methane. Under proposals put to Tessa Jowell, the Games' supremo, today by Wood for Gold, a cross-industry campaign to promote use of sustainable wood, the torch at London 2012 will convert waste wood from the Olympic site into biomass. This biomass will be fuel to generate heat and power for the torch and the flame.
For every tree cut down to provide wood for the Olympic site, three will be planted at one of five Olympic forests by the Forestry Commission. These will take between 30 and 40 years to mature.
And woodchip used as biomass fuel is a sustainable source of energy because unlike fossil fuels, which are a finite resource, wood is infinitely renewable because it requires only light and water to grow. Rather than let wood rot in landfill, London 2012 organisers will use the energy in it as biomass fuel. And the ash waste created by burning the wood as biomass will be reused to create terra preta soils, an ancient method, favoured by indigenous South Americans, of mixing ash with waste to create extremely fertile soils.
Wood forms a huge part of the raw materials being used for construction of the Olympic Park, for stadia, seats, housing, hoardings and billboards. Though it is impossible to know how much wood will be used on the site, or how much of that will end up being waste, approximately £350m of the overall £9.3bn budget for the Games is being spent on timber alone.
Craig White, the chairman of Wood for Gold, said: "London 2012 has been labelled the low-carbon Games, and off-setting is a big part of the planning. But the design we're discussing doesn't just offset carbon, it actually reduces it. That's a pretty exciting prospect".
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