YANQING, CHINA (AFP) – Bright yellow turbines line the slopes of the Beijing Winter Olympics, spraying out the artificial snow needed for the Games to take place.

Man-made snow has been used to varying degrees since the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.

But February’s Beijing Games will depend almost entirely on artificial snow because they are happening in one of the driest parts of China.

With just five weeks until the Games begin, organisers are racing to coat the pistes in high-quality snow – a vast and complex task that critics say is environmentally unsustainable.

The venues use automated snow-making systems that monitor air temperature and humidity to maximise production.

Fed by local reservoirs, about 300 turbines – known as “snow guns” – mix water with compressed air before propelling the droplets into the air to form snow.

Workers then use truck-like vehicles called “snowcats” to spread the snow onto the pistes and sculpt jumps and turns.

Venues must ensure the snow meets precise standards of depth, hardness and consistency.

“The biggest challenge for us is maintaining uniform snow quality,” said Deputy Chief Li Xin, who oversees mountain operations at the National Alpine Skiing Centre in Yanqing, about 80 kilometres from Beijing.

Variations in the snow-making process “can cause snow quality to be too hard in some places and too soft in others, which could be dangerous for the athletes”, he told a press event at the site.

WATER SHORTAGES

The stark white patches stand out vividly against Yanqing’s brown mountains, which see minimal natural snowfall.

An International Olympic Committee evaluation report said that Zhangjiakou and Yanqing – the Games zones hosting alpine skiing and snowboarding, among other outdoor events – “would rely completely on artificial snow”.

A 2020 study in science publication Nature warned that groundwater depletion in northern China was a “critical issue” and among the highest globally, due to intensive agricultural irrigation, rapid urbanisation, and a dry climate.

This has meant water shortages for millions of Beijing residents and the water supply is likely to worsen in the future, researchers said.

Organisers at the Winter Olympics say the snow-makers are powered by renewable energy and will not damage mountain ecosystems, while the water they use will return to local reservoirs as the snow melts in spring. The equipment’s automated systems reduce the kind of human error that can lead to wastage, said the China general manager for TechnoAlpin Florian Hajzeri.

TechnoAlpin is the Italian company that supplies the machines.

With resorts worldwide turning to artificial snow to operate smoothly through the winter, “no matter which Olympics, there will always be snow-making systems for all of the venues”, he told AFP.

But experts say the reliance on man-made snow undermines Beijing’s pledge to hold a “green” Games. Using large quantities of power and resources to create snow in the water-scarce region is “irresponsible”, said geography professor at France’s University of Strasbourg Carmen de Jong.

FRANKFURT (AFP) – On the 23rd floor of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) towering Frankfurt headquarters, on the other side of a security door, anti-counterfeiting experts are poring over some of the best fake banknotes in the eurozone.

The room, off limits to outsiders, at first glance recalls a high school science lab – an unusually well-equipped one.

Lined up on the workbenches are 3D microscopes, ultra-sensitive scales and special devices designed to detect around a dozen of the safety features embedded in genuine euro banknotes – and spot the forgeries.

The analysis done by the handful of specialists in the room helps the ECB keep up to date with the latest counterfeiting techniques, and hopefully stay a step ahead.

Twenty years after the launch of the single currency, the risk of a eurozone citizen holding a fake euro note is “very slim”, head of the ECB’s currency development division Jean-Michel Grimal said.

And the chances have been getting slimmer by the year.

According to the ECB – responsible for issuing bills while the central banks of the 19 eurozone nations each produce their own coins – banknote counterfeiting fell to a historically low level in 2020.

Around 460,000 fake euro bills were taken out of circulation last year, an 18-per-cent drop on 2019.

By comparison, there are currently 27 billion genuine euro notes out there.

The safety of euro banknotes has contributed to the “strong trust” eurozone citizens have in the single currency, Grimal said, with recent surveys putting support for the euro at around 80 per cent.

HELPING POLICE

The lab’s biggest treasure is a large iron cabinet that requires two people to open it, each only knowing part of the secret combination.

Inside is a trove of nearly 1,000 fake banknotes, from five- to 500-euro bills, that have been studied over the past two decades.

Every eurozone country has its own counterfeiting detection centre, but Frankfurt holds the most “interesting” examples because they are considered the best imitations, said Eric Languillat, one of the ECB’s counterfeiting experts.

The analysis done here also helps to give “a quantitative view of the (fake) notes circulating in Europe”, he said.

The findings are shared with police services like the European Union (EU) police agency Europol to help them track down counterfeiting networks.

The ECB’s research and development teams, tasked with constantly improving the quality and security of euro bills, also feed off the lab’s discoveries.

“If we notice the counterfeiters using certain technological methods, the R&D teams will look at what they can put in place to counteract them,” said Grimal.

The ECB’s tampering-fighting efforts come at a price, requiring a sizable annual budget.

But the money spent “is a good investment compared to the cost of a counterfeiting crisis”, said Grimal.

‘FEEL, LOOK, TILT’

The Frankfurt analysts examine the bills into the smallest details.

On one computer screen, a genuine EUR20 note is blown up to nearly 70 times its size, revealing the tiny waves inside the “20” figure, resembling the ridges of a ploughed field, and quite a challenge to imitate.

Citizens don’t necessarily “have the instinct to look closely at notes”, said Languillat.

That’s why the ECB has for years encouraged the public to use the “feel, look, tilt” method to check that what they’re holding is the real thing – no microscope required.

Special printing ensures no other notes feel like euro notes, holding a bill up to the light reveals the watermark and security thread, while tilting it changes the hologram and colour-shifting images.

“If you look carefully at a banknote, the quality of a fake is generally pretty bad, it should be easy to spot,” he said.