Did you catch any of the Olympic Games this weekend?

Aside from Great Britain’s Gold medal in women’s skeleton, the Olympics are interesting to watch if only just to see the result of the technology advancements that are pushing athletes further, faster and stronger. Being the first Olympics of this decade, the winter games are setting a benchmark for our own upcoming 2012 summer games here in London. The technological advancements being used in Vancouver act as a preview of what’s to come in London 2012.

It is not just the athletes being made more efficient. The Olympics themselves are using technology to become state-of-the-art and nowhere is that more obvious than in sustainability. An exciting tech advancement is the Venue Energy Tracker from Speed client, Pulse Energy. Their software monitors and analyses energy use in Olympic buildings, highlighting areas where energy consumption can be reduced and then making this information available online, live. Dashboards of different venues, found at www.venueenergytracker.com, display real-time electrical consumption along with showing savings through sustainable practices. The games are on course to save approximately 18 gigawatt hours of electricity – enought to power more than 1,600 homes for an entire year.

With the London 2012 Games aiming to be the greenest ever, monitoring energy consumption at Vancouver is important as it is the first time it has ever been done at the Olympics, providing London with a benchmark for comparison.

Britain may not walk away from this year’s games with many medals, but we will leave with an understanding of how green we need to make our Olympics, setting a challenge London is ready to step up to.