Energy

Flughafen Zürich AG supplies the entire airport with heat and electricity. Reliability and efficiency are the top priorities here.

Energy Strategy 2030

With its “Energy Strategy 2030” Flughafen Zürich AG is seeking to ensure a secure, economic and environmentally responsible energy supply for the whole airport in the future. The strategy aims to reduce primary energy consumption, smooth out peak demand and increase the airportʼs energy autonomy.

A team is working exclusively on optimising operations.

Efficient energy supply

Flughafen Zürich AG uses a number of different technologies and forms of energy in order to provide reliable and efficient heating, air conditioning and electrical power across the whole airport. Using a combined heat and power generation system, the airportʼs own heating plant provides both electricity and heat, which is distributed over an extensive district heating network. The main fuel is natural gas. Superficial geothermal energy extracted with heat exchangers is utilised for heating and cooling some buildings.

In addition to generating electricity in its own heating plant, the percentage of electricity generated by photovoltaic systems at the airport is steadily increasing. With two already in operation, further arrays are in the pipeline or are now being constructed. The majority of electricity required continues to be bought in.

Energy demand in 2017

During the reporting year, 101,895 MWh of heat and 162,878 MWh of electricity were consumed at Zurich Airport. Expressed as primary energy, this equates to a total demand of 512,347 MWh, which represents a decrease of around 1%. Primary energy also includes the energy necessary for generation and transmission which is required before an energy vector can be used as final energy (electricity, heating).

Large-scale consumers agreement

As a large-scale consumer, Flughafen Zürich AG has signed an agreement with the Building Department of the Canton of Zurich. This obliges the company to make average annual efficiency improvements of 2%, measured on the basis of the number of user units and the heated area of the airport. The target for specific energy consumption was also met in the reporting period.

Measures

Flughafen Zürich AG constantly strives to reduce its energy demand and improve efficiency. As well as its building renovation programme, such measures also include optimising existing systems. In the reporting period, around 3,000 conventional lights were replaced with LED models in buildings, for example, thus halving electricity requirements.