Local cows and the power of the sun are already providing green energy at Memmingen Airport. This is because an important raw material is supplied by a biogas plant from the region, which produces valuable biogas from slurry and manure, which is already being used in a new combined heat and power plant at Memmingen Airport and saves both fossil fuels and CO2. The 18-minute video production impressively shows how the interplay of biogas and solar energy, which is generated by a large photovoltaic system at the airport, is becoming an important cornerstone of climate neutrality. “We can use this to produce modern energy sources that not only help us to operate our airport fleet in a CO2-neutral way, but can also form the basis for climate-neutral flying,” explains Airport Managing Director Ralf Schmid, who is also a member of the management board of Airport Energiemanagement GmbH. In a further step, this can be used to produce so-called e-kerosene, which should enable climate-neutral flying in the future, especially for large passenger aircraft, without extensive conversion measures on the aircraft and on the ground. The film is now available on the erneuerbare.tv YouTube channel. Erneuerbare.tv uses best practice examples to communicate the energy transition with high-quality journalistic films. The films are edited by the Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology IEE. The aim is to publicise the research findings of the institute and other scientific institutions to a broad public.
The Green Airport Memmingen project has set itself the goal of being able to operate the airport infrastructure in a climate-neutral manner by 2030. To this end, Airport Energie Management GmbH, a subsidiary of Flughafen Memmingen GmbH and e-con AG, a subsidiary of the Alois Müller Group, was founded in 2017. The biogas cogeneration plant, which was inaugurated just under a year ago, is the centrepiece of the concept. “The new plant,” says Andreas Müller, Managing Director of Airport Energiemanagement GmbH, “saves 650,000 cubic metres of natural gas or heating oil per year in the same quantity and also reduces CO2 emissions from heat generation at the airport by around 1,600 tonnes per year.”
However, not only the operation of an airport infrastructure should be climate-neutral. The airlines should be offered climate-neutral fuels, so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), so that they are able to fly climate-neutrally to and from Memmingen. “The demand will increase,” says Ralf Schmid. This is because from 2025, fuel suppliers will have to blend increasing quantities of sustainable aviation fuels into paraffin. By 2050, the proportion is set to rise to 70 per cent. This was agreed last year by the two EU legislators, the European Parliament and the EU member states.
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