In early January, more than 90,000 figure skating fans gathered in St. Louis to watch the glitz and grind of the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships – the final Olympic qualifier for Team USA figure skaters. But like with all things, it came at a cost.
For the past eight years, I too have competed, performed and trained in the discipline of women’s singles skating. I’ve also spent six of those years as a climate advocate. This duality is precisely why I can admit that figure skating, like other Olympic ice sports, is unsustainable in its current form. Ice sports decision-makers have an obligation to save the temperate foundation of our sport – for the sake of other Winter Olympic sports and, most important, our planet.
Warming winters have piqued concern within the International Olympic Committee in recent years. The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing were notably the first Winter Games to use solely artificial snow, relying on more than 192 million gallons of water. This upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Milan will likely use 85 million cubic feet of artificial snow to address declines in snowfall due to warming temperatures.
Artificial snow production is notoriously water-resource intensive. One French environmental group – Collectif Citoyen – is pursuing legal action against 2030 French Alps Winter Olympics organizers due to the degradation, according to The Associated Press, of “water resources and fragile mountain ecosystems” that would be harmed by venue construction and other aspects of hosting the games.
How ice rinks warm the planet
Indoor ice arenas bring their own set of climate consequences due to dependence on a category of atmospherically potent “refrigerants," specifically human-made hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that are found in some everyday cooling appliances.
For ice rinks, HFCs are primarily used to cool the visible base layer of the rink, which typically consists of a slab of chilled concrete. However, HFC gas throughout the cooling process tends to leak out of equipment and subsequently into the atmosphere, where it resides with a greenhouse impact greater than carbon dioxide.
Furthermore, Zambonis − the predominant ice resurfacing mechanism – are vehicles that are traditionally reliant on diesel-based fuel. Their use amplifies indoor air pollution by emitting carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, the latter of which is also one of the most prominent atmospheric pollutants.
The decarbonization of ice rinks, of course, won't alone fix global warming, with many other sports contributing to our climate catastrophe. Addressing climate change requires contributions from all of us – including sports that don't seem to be directly impacted and those on the front lines of the problem, such as skiing and snowboarding.
No one is exempt from responsibility, and especially not elite sport circuits.
Fortunately, we have already made progress toward sustainable skating. Even amid intensive water use, the Beijing Olympics made history by cooling the ice arena primarily with liquified carbon dioxide. While carbon dioxide, a notorious greenhouse gas, brings its own set of issues, this adaptation eliminated reliance on particularly potent HFCs.
Additionally, the International Skating Union released inaugural “Sustainability Guidelines” in 2024 to help all member federations make elite competitions greener.
Canada and US have the most indoor ice arenas. Plastic could be the answer.
Individual facilities have already taken such steps, too.
In 2021, Union Arena Community Center in Woodstock, Vermont, became the “first net-zero indoor ice rink” in the United States. That status was achieved through energy-efficient equipment upgrades and a rooftop solar panel microgrid to power the arena. According to the executive director of Union Arena, Ejay Bishop, the facility is also saving an estimated $90,000 annually in energy bill costs due to the efficiency upgrades.
To the south, Mexico City substituted the real ice surface of the world’s largest ice rink for a plastic-based alternative, saving nearly 49,000 gallons of water annually. Notably, synthetic ice also does not rely on any potent greenhouse gas to remain cool.
While plastic-based synthetic ice inevitably presents its own range of environmental and performative trade-offs, water conservation is an important consideration as drought intensity increases – this is a central issue in the French Alps case.
Today, the United States possesses the largest number of indoor ice rinks behind Canada. If anyone must lead the sustainability revolution of skating, it is the U.S. Figure Skating association, Skate Canada or a combination of the two federations working in unison. Acting sooner rather than later to decarbonize skating can help preserve the frosty origins of our sport for future generations of skaters and spectators – in the Olympic season and beyond.
Jasmine Wynn is an environmental advocate studying environmental history at Harvard University.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Winter Olympics ice, snow are unsustainable unless we act | Opinion
