European scheme to try to cut airport energy use for heating, ventilation and air conditioning by 20%

Airports tend to be inefficient buildings which use a lot of energy, mainly for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC).  Energy used for HVAC can be half of the total airport use.  A European programme hopes to get European airports to cut their HVAC energy consumption by 20%, over 3 years,  largely by using better fault detection and diagnostics, with an energy action plan based on the international management standard ISO 50001.  They hope to detect if equipment is on when it is not needed, when the settings are wrong, poor positioning of sensors and poor maintenance.  Airport buildings are vast, especially with the extra space given over to lucrative retail – the sheer scale means high energy use to keep the temperature correct. An EU study shows the 500 airports in the 28 European member states emit as much CO2 as a city of 50 million people. As the industry intends to grow at a fast rate, pressure is bound to grow on airports to improve the energy performance. Two Italian airports, Fiumicino in Rome and Malpensa in Milan, are being used as pilots to see if the scheme would work. The energy use of airports, and their CO2 emissions, are part of the total emissions of the aviation  industry.
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Polluting the planet before you take off

London's Heathrow airport: A European airport may emit as much greenhouse gas as a city of 100,000 people Image: Fingalo Christian Bickel via Wikimedia Commons

By Paul Brown  (Climate News Network)

Airports are disastrously inefficient buildings which belch greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contribute hugely to climate change, a European study has found.

LONDON, 7 August – Airlines are under increasing pressure to use more efficient aircraft to reduce the damage the industry is doing to the planet as it continues to grow.

In its defence the industry says it produces only 2% of the world’s carbon dioxide, and 12% of the total from the transport industry, and that it is therefore a tiny problem compared with private cars which produce 74% of transport’s CO2.

But in this battle of statistics the role of airports, the vast air-conditioned waiting rooms and shopping malls containing thousands of waiting passengers, has not so far been taken into account.

Now a European Union study has shown that Europe’s 500 airports in the 28 member countries together emit as much CO2 as a city of 50 million people.

The paper says airport buildings are disastrously inefficient structures which produce large quantities of greenhouse gases. Big airports each have emissions equal those of a city of 100,000 people.

With new airports and vast terminals being built across the planet at an ever-increasing rate to provide for booming international tourism as well as business travel, pressure is bound to grow on the industry to improve its performance.

In a bid to try to curb the problem the EU has begun a three-year programme costing more than €3 million (US$4m) to try to get the continent’s largest airports to be less wasteful of energy. The plan is to cut emissions by 20% over the period the programme runs.

Cheap and easy

The problem is the heating, ventilation and air conditioning plants which consume half the energy used in each airport. The EU’s solution is to use computers to control the plants so that faults are detected immediately and waste is kept to a minimum by careful management.

Two Italian airports, Fiumicino in Rome and Malpensa in Milan, used by 55 million people a year, agreed to act as pilots to see if the scheme would work.

The engineers concentrated on the large air conditioning units, chiller plants and cooling towers at the airports. They found equipment running when it was not needed, incorrect heating and cooling settings, poor positioning of sensors and poor maintenance.

Just by simple inexpensive measures like re-setting heating controls and replacing faulty sensors, each airport could save 3,500 tonnes of CO2 and €70,000 a year, the study found.

The project coordinator, Nicolas Réhault, head of group building performance optimization at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg, Germany, said the same software could be applied to other complex buildings and save large quantities of energy and the subsequent emissions.

False comparison

He explained: “Airports are very complex infrastructures. We have gained a lot of know-how on how these infrastructures work. This can be replicated to other highly complex buildings such as hospitals and banks. And it could be downscaled to simpler things, too.”

Already Airports Council International is so impressed by the results that it has undertaken to demonstrate the results of the pilot project to the biggest 400 of Europe’s airports in an attempt to get them to adopt the system.

The project will no doubt help the European Commission’s goals in reducing is overall carbon dioxide emissions. But this focus on airports’ wasteful use of energy will also increase pressure on the industry to improve its performance.

Already the simple use of quantities of emissions from each source – aircraft, trains and cars, for example – is not a fair comparison of their contribution to climate change. For example, aviation is said to be more damaging because its emissions are high in the atmosphere and cause contrails which trap heat.

Environmental groups are likely to factor in the role of airports in increasing emissions when lobbying governments to take some action on aviation in future climate talks. – Climate News Network

 

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/08/polluting-the-planet-before-you-take-off/

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From the European Commission, CORDIS (Community Research and Development Research Service)

http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/93078_en.html

CASCADE: REDUCING ENERGY USE BY AIRPORTS

Airports are big energy consumers – and that’s before a plane takes off or lands. The daily electricity and thermal energy used by a large airport compares to that of a city of 100,000 people.

CASCADE: REDUCING ENERGY USE BY AIRPORTS

There are around 500 airports in the 28 European Union member states and even the smallest one consumes energy like there’s no tomorrow. The goal of the EU’s three-year CASCADE project – ICT for Energy Efficient Airports – is to help airport managers reduce their energy needs and cut the CO2 emissions caused specifically by their high-consuming heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) plants by 20 % in the short term.

The nine CASCADE partners , funded with EUR 2.6 million from the EC’s 7th Framework Programme , aim to do this by means of new software, coupled with an energy action plan based on the international management standard ISO 50001, and algorithms for fault detection and diagnostics. Using the CASCADE system, faults can be detected quickly and automatically before the systems are damaged or fail, or too much energy is wasted, and thus help airport maintenance teams implement corrective actions and improve the performance of equipment in the plants.

It’s perfect timing for airport managers, as they are under pressure to help the EU meet its 20-20-20 goals (one of them being to cut domestic emissions 20 % by 2020) by economizing in energy management. And for this they need tools which provide adequate support. CASCADE provides them with such a tool, integrating it with the existing ICT solutions already installed at airport facilities.

HVAC SYSTEMS CONSUME 50% OF ALL ENERGY AT AIRPORTS

Rome’s Fiumicino and Milan’s Malpensa airports, the two biggest in Italy, agreed to act as pilots, dedicating personnel and resources to the project. Some 55 million passengers use these airports every year. Around half of the energy they use is consumed by heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, so reducing this by 20% will significantly reduce overall energy consumption at the airports.

‘We are not targeting the whole airport infrastructure,’ said CASCADE coordinator Nicolas Réhault , head of group building performance optimization at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg, Germany. ‘Our objective is to save 20 % energy on these targeted systems by optimizing savings and with the knowledge we gain we then want to replicate the solution at other airports.

Focusing on the HVAC systems – especially the large air handling units, chiller plants and cooling towers the airports use – the project team installed hundreds of new sensors, meters and advanced data loggers at the two airports to step up measurement of parameters such as temperature, pressure, flow rates, electrical consumption, etc.

Engineers using this new measurement framework can control and benchmark equipment performance and optimize user behavior. Coupling this to fault detection tools, they have been able to root out problems in scheduling (equipment running when it’s not needed), incorrect heating and cooling settings in different areas of the airport, poor positioning of sensors or actuators, lack of calibration or maintenance, unbalanced pipe and duct systems, and so on.

After the first six months of the pilot phase, the CASCADE system has already detected some control and sensor faults in large air handling units that provide Fiumicino Terminal 1 with fresh air. Estimated savings of 500 MWh, which corresponds to about 3,500 tons of CO2 or 70 000 EUR a year, are achievable just by implementing low-investment measures like resetting the controls or replacing faulty sensors, the researchers found.

SOFTWARE COULD BE APPLIED TO OTHER COMPLEX BUILDINGS

Interest in the project has extended across the EU. Airports Council International has committed its support to the proposal by providing a channel to demonstrate the results to 400 of the 500 EU-28 airports. The CASCADE consortium hopes that through its network other airports will integrate the CASCADE software tool into their energy management plans.

There will be other applications for the CASCADE software, as Nicolas went on to explain. ‘Airports are very complex infrastructures. We have gained a lot of know-how on how these infrastructures work. This can be replicated to other highly complex buildings such as hospitals and banks. And it could be downscaled to simpler things, too.’

http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/93078_en.html
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