ENVIRONMENT NEWS Going green Oliver Clark takes a closer look at some of the latest environmental stories from around the globe. Australia’s greenest data
centre unveiled Brisbane Airport has opened Australia’s most energy efficient data centre. The $44 million iseek Data Centre was built using a number of cutting edge ‘green’ construction techniques and has been given a 1.3 rating using the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) benchmark developed by The Green Grid, a global consortium that recommends a maximum 1.5 PUE rating for data centres. Brisbane Airport Corporation Pty Limited (BAC) CEO and
managing director Julieanne Alroe said the facility changes the way companies host their mission-critical IT systems, providing a new standard of security, power efficiency, capacity and connectivity. “Information is the new currency, and its storage and
management is one of the new challenges we face in the world today,” says Alroe. “As IT operations become a more complex and crucial
aspect of most organisations, the need for more powerful, reliable and energy efficient infrastructure to support non-stop IT systems has become critical. Information today needs to be housed centrally, on a location commitmed to sustainability.”
Practice makes perfect UK airports’ efforts to reduce emissions generated by aircraft
while on the ground have been turned into a major push to slash CO2
emissions nationally thanks to an initiative led by the Airport
Operators Association (AOA). The ‘Aircraft on the Ground CO2
Reduction Programme’,
developed with input from BAA, Manchester Airports Group (MAG) and Birmingham Airport amongst others, is a collection of best practice guidelines gathered to help airports work with airlines and other partners to cut emissions. Recommendations include reducing engine taxiing, the use of fixed
electrical ground power and the use of pre-conditioned air, instead of keeping auxiliary power units running on planes when stationary. Any member of UK-based AOA can sign up for the programme
with 15 airports already having joined, representing some 70% of all passenger traffic in the UK.
News in brief Manchester
airports highlight Airports Group, which recently
unveiled its first sustainability report, is bringing its green message to the travelling public courtesy of several environment ‘superzones’. The zones at Bournemouth, Humberside, East Midlands and Manchester
their efforts to reduce pollution and waste. individual
Bee’s knees Experiments using the honey from bees to test air quality at airports across
Germany indicate that the base metals and other pollutants associated with aircraft emissions are no higher around their facilities than elsewhere. The Bavaria-based Orga Lab compared samples of honey and wax from beehives
at Bonn, Hanover, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Düsseldorf airports with control samples from non-airport sites for traces of pollutants such as mercury, zinc and arsenic and since 2007 tests have revealed no discernible difference between airport and non-airport sites. “All results indicate that the pollutant contents in ‘airport honey’ do not exceed
those found in the control samples. In other words, honeys from both locations (airport and control location) contain similar concentrations of pollutants and those concentrations are close to nil. “These results suggest, that at least medium-sized airports like Hamburg do not
adversely affect local air quality,” says Udo Bradersen, environment manager at Hamburg Airport.
Malta International Airport has announced it is installing a €200,000 photovoltaic solar farm that is expected to cut the gateway’s carbon footprint by about 145,000kg per year. The solar farm is expected to be open by November with Electrofix Energy contracted to supply, install and commission the entire system.
Over 60 tonnes of waste have been diverted from landfill in the past
three months at Stansted
Airport meaning the gateway is on track to end landfill dumping by 2015. Dr Andy Jefferson, head of environment at Stansted, said the introduction of food composting by catering companies had delivered “great results” in the first three months.
AIRPORT WORLD/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 83
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