By Celsias Team
Posted on March 25, 2011. Listed in:
Well, not really. But according to Auckland Airport, changes to its energy use could reduce energy consumption by 26 percent, enough to power 1,200 houses, all the while reducing its carbon footprint by 10 percent and saving about 1 million per year.
What kind of changes? Small, barely noticeable ones, according to the airport’s sustainability advisor, Martin Frye.
“For instance a very small adjustment to the amount of water used by the showers and taps around the terminal building saves us $80,000 a year immediately, yet the change is barely noticeable to passengers,” he says.
Other initiatives identified, with a little help from an independent energy audit by Energy Management Association of New Zealand, include allowing seasonal variations of the terminal’s internal temperature to take account of the external weather conditions and simply turning off appliances that are not required.
“This programme is just one part of the airport’s wider environmental strategy to drive down our carbon footprint and introduce a better, more efficient way of working,” says Fryer. “We’ll achieve payback on all the changes within two years and will be looking at ways we can apply similar adjustments across the entire airport operation.”
In a related aviation-esque point, aviation contributes only about 2 percent of global carbon emissions, with transport and power generation the two main culprits sitting at 25 percent a piece.
For a related aviation-esque story, the Guardian does a good job HERE.
Martin has done a great job in general and the PV panels make an interesting demonstration project.
It would be good though to know what the payback is on the PV panels alone, without bundling their payback up with faster payback projects.
Also, how they rank when comparing total environmental benefit per $ spent compared to other 'less sexy' end use efficiencies, such as back of house lighting efficiency/controls and a change from 'small pipes big pumps' to 'big pipes small pumps' across the mechanical services.
Written in March 2011