Airport Experience News Fall 2022

SUSTAINABILITY SNAPSHOT

BRIDGING THE SUSTAINABILITY GAP A Q&A With Paul Hoback of Pittsburgh International Airport

BY SALLY KRAL

ditor’s Note: In May, the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Aviation invited aviation industry experts to a hearing centered on addressing climate change at airports. Paul Hoback, executive vice president and chief development officer for Allegheny County Airport Authority , testified remotely to the committee, highlighting the many measures Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) is taking to become more environmentally friendly. AXNContributing Writer Sally Kral spoke with Hoback to learn more about his testimony and PIT’s sustainability efforts and goals. E

KRAL: Can you speak in some detail about what you addressed in your testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in May? HOBACK: We at Pittsburgh understand that airports are economic engines and must be drivers of technological change and sustainability, so that’s why we were so happy to be able to take part in that discussion. One of the most important aspects that I had the opportunity to talk about was our microgrid, and that’s really one of the biggest reasons we were invited to this hearing. Our microgrid, which we just started running in June of last year, is the first of its kind at any airport. It has helped us become entirely self-sufficient and completely off the electrical grid while also allowing us to significantly decrease our carbon footprint. It’s a 23-megawatt microgrid that serves as the primary electrical power for the entire Pittsburgh airport campus. It’s run off of five natural gas-fired generators and nearly 10,000 solar panels that are built on top of a landfill—the power from these sources could power 13,000 homes. When we’re running at full power during peak demand here at the airport, we run at about

14 megawatts, so this 23-megwatt microgrid actually has excess power that’s sold back to the electrical grid. And the microgrid utilizes much cleaner energy than our current electrical grid, which still runs off of some coal-fired power plants. So rather than importing our energy from that electrical grid, our microgrid provides a yearly carbon reduction of over 8 million pounds. That’s the equivalent of eliminating 800 cars from the roadway or 9 million miles driven by passenger cars each and every year. Plus it has also provided us the opportunity to reduce our electrical costs by generating all the power right here on the property. In our first year of service we estimated that we saved over a million dollars in electrical costs. KRAL: So it makes business sense as well? HOBACK: Exactly. And I didn’t even mention the resiliency that this microgrid provides an airport. When airports have power outages, it causes a ripple effect in the air transportation system: it impacts flights not just at that airport, but also at every other airport that that might connect with it. So from a resiliency perspective, the fact that we’re running off our own power generated off this microgrid and that the electrical

Above: Paul Hoback, executive vice president and chief development officer for Allegheny County Airport Authority.

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