In early January, more than 90,000 figure skating fans gathered in St. Louis to watch the excitement of the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the final Olympic qualifying event for the U.S. Figure Skating Team. But like everything, it comes at a price.
I have also competed, performed and trained in women’s singles skating for the past eight years. I also worked as a climate advocate for six of those years. This duality is why I can admit that figure skating, like other Olympic ice sports, is unsustainable in its current form. Ice sport decision-makers have an obligation to save the temperate foundations of our sport – for the sake of other Winter Olympic sports and, most importantly, for the sake of our planet.
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In recent years, mild winters have attracted the attention of the International Olympic Committee. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be the first Winter Olympics to use entirely artificial snow, using more than 192 million gallons of water. The upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan may use 85 million cubic feet of artificial snow to address reduced snowfall due to warming temperatures.
On November 22, 2025, the Olympic rings were erected in front of the surrounding mountains in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. The Winter Olympics will start on February 6 and end on February 22, 2026.
Snowmaking is known to be water intensive. Collectif Citoyen, a French environmental group, is taking legal action against organizers of the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps over concerns that venue construction and other aspects of hosting the games would harm “water resources and the degradation of fragile mountain ecosystems,” the Associated Press reports.
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How ice rinks are warming the planet
Indoor rinks also come with a host of climate consequences due to their reliance on a class of atmospheric “refrigerants,” specifically man-made hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) found in some everyday refrigeration equipment.
For ice rinks, HFCs are primarily used to cool the rink’s visible base, which typically consists of cold concrete slabs. However, throughout the cooling process, HFC gases tend to leak from the equipment and subsequently into the atmosphere, where they contribute more to greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide.
Additionally, Zambonis – the primary ice resurfacing mechanism – are vehicles that have traditionally relied on diesel fuel. Their use contributes to indoor air pollution by emitting carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, one of the most prominent atmospheric pollutants.
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Of course, decarbonizing ice rinks won’t solve global warming alone, and many other sports contribute to our climate disaster. Tackling climate change will require contributions from all of us – including sports that may not seem to have a direct impact as well as those on the front lines of the issue, such as skiing and snowboarding.
No one is exempt from responsibility, least of all the elite sports circuit.
Fortunately, we are already making progress in sustainable skating. Even with the massive use of water, the Beijing Olympics made history by using primarily liquefied carbon dioxide to cool the ice rink. While carbon dioxide, a notorious greenhouse gas, poses its own set of problems, this adaptation eliminates the need for particularly potent hydrofluorocarbons.
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In addition, the International Skating Union has released its first Sustainability Guidelines in 2024 to help all member associations make elite events more environmentally friendly.
Canada and the United States have the largest number of indoor ice rinks. Plastic may be the answer.
Individual facilities have also taken such measures.
In 2021, Union Arena Community Center in Woodstock, Vermont became the nation’s “first net-zero indoor ice rink.” This status was achieved through energy-efficient equipment upgrades and a rooftop solar panel microgrid to power the venue. Ejay Bishop, executive director of Union Arena, said the facility will also save about $90,000 in annual energy bills due to efficiency upgrades.
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To the south, Mexico City replaced real ice at the world’s largest ice rink with a plastic alternative, saving nearly 49,000 gallons of water annually. It’s worth noting that artificial ice also doesn’t rely on any potent greenhouse gases to keep it cool.
While plastic synthetic ice inevitably comes with a range of environmental and performance trade-offs, water conservation is an important consideration as drought intensity increases – an issue at the heart of the French Alps case.
Today, the United States has the largest number of indoor skating rinks after Canada. If anyone has to lead the sustainability revolution in skating, it’s U.S. Figure Skating, Skate Canada or a combination of both federations. Taking early action to decarbonize skating can help preserve the sport’s icy origins for future generations of skaters and spectators – both during the Olympic season and beyond.
Jasmine Wynn is an environmental history student at Harvard University and a competitive figure skater.
Jasmine Wynn is an environmental advocate who studies environmental history at Harvard University.
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This article originally appeared in USA TODAY: Winter Olympics ice and snow are unsustainable unless we take action | Opinion
