By Sarah Halls
Bloomberg
Sept 1, 2011

Organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games dropped a plan to cut carbon emissions during the sporting showcase, abandoning a pledge made when it defeated eight other cities to host the event.

Games administrators will “no longer pursue formal offsetting procedures” to mitigate Olympics-related emissions, documents posted on the London Olympics website said.

David Stubbs, the head of sustainability at the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympics Games, or LOCOG, said in an interview that going ahead with the plan would have shifted the focus away from Britain.

Scrapping the plan, which would have involved offsetting the emissions generated by the Games by investing in clean- energy projects in poor countries, underlines how carbon-saving measures are being overlooked to save money as the U.K. cuts spending and increases taxes amid an economic slowdown. By ditching the program, LOCOG may avoid spending as much as 2.7 million pounds ($4.4 million), according to prices quoted by brokers MF Global.

“Officially, if you want to go down certified carbon- offsetting all projects have to be overseas, so if we plant a lot of trees in Essex that just doesn’t count,” said Stubbs, referring to the English county. “Because the Games are in the U.K., we wanted to maximize the Games locally. Doing formal offsetting would be diverting things.”

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