Aena has put out to tender the drafting of the project and the construction of a new geothermal installation at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport, with a planned investment of 14 million euros and an execution period of 26 months. The contract also includes the maintenance of the future infrastructure for an additional 24 months once it becomes operational.
This initiative is part of the company's Sustainability Strategy and its Climate Action Plan, aimed at advancing the decarbonization of airport activity through the incorporation of renewable energies.
The geothermal installation will allow covering a significant part of the airport's base air conditioning consumption through the generation of thermal energy from sustainable sources.
When the project is finished, the infrastructure will be capable of producing renewable air conditioning energy equivalent to the approximate consumption of 1,700 homes.
In this way, the action will help reduce dependence on fossil fuels and strengthen the energy self-sufficiency of the airport facilities.
To achieve this, a geothermal capture field will be built, consisting of 400 wells 140 meters deep, interconnected with each other and associated with geothermal heat pumps, which will transfer the heat energy generated to the airport's air conditioning systems.
The entire system will comply with current national and international regulations for this type of installation.
The system will take advantage of geothermal exchange with the subsoil through a closed-loop low-enthalpy thermal exchange circuit, a clean and efficient technology that minimizes ground alteration after the execution of the work and avoids the extraction of resources other than the thermal exchange itself.