[Music]
can we change the world by thinking
about water in a different way an idea
came to me when I was flying into
Adelaide Airport after attending a
conference on urban heat Islands urban
heat island is best described as the
temperature difference that you feel
when you leave a hot city drives real
parklands or a leafy suburb and it feels
cooler it’s actually not the parklands
that’s cool it’s that the city is
unnaturally hot so I’m sitting on the
aeroplane gaze out the window at the
brown dry airport that I was flying into
being Adelaide Airport and then I
remembered we’ve got a recycle water
scheme that runs from the wastewater
treatment plant right next door to the
airport then thinking back to the
discussions at the conference earlier
that day I thought I wonder what
benefits we could get if we could just
put that recycled water onto that dry
landscape imagine flying into Adelaide
Airport as a green oasis the Gateway to
our state the interesting part of all
this was that I’d flown into Adelaide
Airport a hundred times before and I’ve
known about that recycle water scheme
for years because it’s part of my day
job but I hadn’t put the two together
something had obviously clicked in my
mind from that conference isn’t it funny
how you can look at something a hundred
times and not see the obvious so anyway
I went to our friends at the airport and
I said look I’ve got this idea imagine
if we could make the airport green all
year round and maybe we could reduce the
air temperature enough that you would
actually see a reduction in your energy
usage in the cooling towers that cool
the airport terminal they got pretty
excited I was already excited so we
decided to set up a trial so we
established a little trial area a few
hundred meters
south of the runway set up an irrigation
system similar to what you’d see on a
typical farm and we put air temperature
sensors around the airport so that we
could determine the difference in air
temperature between the irrigated and
the only area irrigated areas being an
airport site we had to make sure that we
didn’t have an impact on airport
operations safety was paramount we had
to make sure that we didn’t influence
bird activity wildlife or anything else
so we started the trial irrigating every
second or third night using about the
same amount of water that you’d use to
keep your backyard green over summer and
we looked at the data and we found that
we were getting about a three degree or
more temperature difference between
irrigated and the only gated areas on
warm days and that gave us some real
encouragement to look into this a bit
deeper and we started to think what
benefits could you get if you actually
expanded this to all the areas of the
airport where it was safe to do so we
focused on three main areas being the
money side of it
which is pretty important I’ve heard the
farming side of it which I’ll explain in
a minute and the carbon side of it which
is pretty topical I should also add that
this was a world first trial of its kind
cooling down an airport simply through
irrigation and isn’t it great that
happened here in Adelaide and the
information that we’ve got from that
trial could be used in many airports
around the world it can be used in other
settings like an urban park or even your
own backyard
but that’s a story for another time so
everything’s going along nicely chatting
to a pilot friend of mine and he said
well three degrees could actually have
an impact on the fuel use during takeoff
it could actually reduce the amount of
fuel that’s used by the airplane my
first reaction was whiskey-tango-foxtrot
we hadn’t even thought about that
so my second reaction was to engage an
aircraft performance specialist to try
and dig a bit deeper and find some of
these things out they came up with some
really interesting aspects like the fuel
reduction that you could get from the
aircraft’s air conditioning system when
it’s parked at the terminal gate the
ability to maintain or even increase the
payload capacity of the aircraft on hot
days and also things like wear and tear
on the tires and engines one thing we
didn’t look at was the impact of flight
cancelations we know that earlier this
year in Arizona 50 flights were canceled
in one day because it was just too hot
for the planes to take off that’s a big
impact and we know that as a consequence
of climate change these types of events
are going to increase in the future so
imagine if we could avoid that risk by
just adding water now for the farming
side of it we thought we’d plant loosin
which is a stock feed loved by cows
everywhere and we did this because we
thought well I wonder if we could grow
something that could actually make us
some money instead of just grass and
then we started thinking well every
major city around the world has an
airport and every Airport has a big area
of buffer land around the runways
could we actually
turn that buffer land into productive
land could we actually grow food for
livestock or even for us we looked at an
airport about the size of Adelaide and
the irrigation area where it was safe to
irrigate and we thought within that area
you could grow enough potatoes to feed a
hundred and forty thousand people per
year or enough rice to feed 40,000
people per year and with the money that
you get from the sale of that produce
you could contribute to or maybe even
eliminate the cost of the water that was
used to grow those crops and cool the
airport and now for carbon most of us
have ticked that little box when we were
booking our flights to say that we’re
happy to contribute a cost to offsetting
our carbon for that flight but I bet
we’ve thought I wonder where that carbon
is we trust it exists but wouldn’t it be
great if we could see it
wouldn’t it be also great if you could
actually encourage the airlines to
invest in the sprinklers the pipes the
pumps in exchange for the Carbon Farming
credits that could be generated and
traded in countries like Australia the
airlines would also get a carbon credit
for the fuel reduction related to the
cooler air that I talked about earlier
the next stages for this project are to
expand it hopefully over a wider area of
Adelaide Airport and also start the
conversation with other airports that
are interested in this approach and
hopefully one day soon I’ll be sitting
back on that plane eating my potato
curry on rice from that Airport farm
below as I gaze out the window at that
green oasis
knowing that because we’ve thought of
water in a different way we’ve come up
with and demonstrated a way that can
help us all adapt to climate change now
wouldn’t that be cool thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
can we change the world by thinking
about water in a different way an idea
came to me when I was flying into
Adelaide Airport after attending a
conference on urban heat Islands urban
heat island is best described as the
temperature difference that you feel
when you leave a hot city drives real
parklands or a leafy suburb and it feels
cooler it’s actually not the parklands
that’s cool it’s that the city is
unnaturally hot so I’m sitting on the
aeroplane gaze out the window at the
brown dry airport that I was flying into
being Adelaide Airport and then I
remembered we’ve got a recycle water
scheme that runs from the wastewater
treatment plant right next door to the
airport then thinking back to the
discussions at the conference earlier
that day I thought I wonder what
benefits we could get if we could just
put that recycled water onto that dry
landscape imagine flying into Adelaide
Airport as a green oasis the Gateway to
our state the interesting part of all
this was that I’d flown into Adelaide
Airport a hundred times before and I’ve
known about that recycle water scheme
for years because it’s part of my day
job but I hadn’t put the two together
something had obviously clicked in my
mind from that conference isn’t it funny
how you can look at something a hundred
times and not see the obvious so anyway
I went to our friends at the airport and
I said look I’ve got this idea imagine
if we could make the airport green all
year round and maybe we could reduce the
air temperature enough that you would
actually see a reduction in your energy
usage in the cooling towers that cool
the airport terminal they got pretty
excited I was already excited so we
decided to set up a trial so we
established a little trial area a few
hundred meters
south of the runway set up an irrigation
system similar to what you’d see on a
typical farm and we put air temperature
sensors around the airport so that we
could determine the difference in air
temperature between the irrigated and
the only area irrigated areas being an
airport site we had to make sure that we
didn’t have an impact on airport
operations safety was paramount we had
to make sure that we didn’t influence
bird activity wildlife or anything else
so we started the trial irrigating every
second or third night using about the
same amount of water that you’d use to
keep your backyard green over summer and
we looked at the data and we found that
we were getting about a three degree or
more temperature difference between
irrigated and the only gated areas on
warm days and that gave us some real
encouragement to look into this a bit
deeper and we started to think what
benefits could you get if you actually
expanded this to all the areas of the
airport where it was safe to do so we
focused on three main areas being the
money side of it
which is pretty important I’ve heard the
farming side of it which I’ll explain in
a minute and the carbon side of it which
is pretty topical I should also add that
this was a world first trial of its kind
cooling down an airport simply through
irrigation and isn’t it great that
happened here in Adelaide and the
information that we’ve got from that
trial could be used in many airports
around the world it can be used in other
settings like an urban park or even your
own backyard
but that’s a story for another time so
everything’s going along nicely chatting
to a pilot friend of mine and he said
well three degrees could actually have
an impact on the fuel use during takeoff
it could actually reduce the amount of
fuel that’s used by the airplane my
first reaction was whiskey-tango-foxtrot
we hadn’t even thought about that
so my second reaction was to engage an
aircraft performance specialist to try
and dig a bit deeper and find some of
these things out they came up with some
really interesting aspects like the fuel
reduction that you could get from the
aircraft’s air conditioning system when
it’s parked at the terminal gate the
ability to maintain or even increase the
payload capacity of the aircraft on hot
days and also things like wear and tear
on the tires and engines one thing we
didn’t look at was the impact of flight
cancelations we know that earlier this
year in Arizona 50 flights were canceled
in one day because it was just too hot
for the planes to take off that’s a big
impact and we know that as a consequence
of climate change these types of events
are going to increase in the future so
imagine if we could avoid that risk by
just adding water now for the farming
side of it we thought we’d plant loosin
which is a stock feed loved by cows
everywhere and we did this because we
thought well I wonder if we could grow
something that could actually make us
some money instead of just grass and
then we started thinking well every
major city around the world has an
airport and every Airport has a big area
of buffer land around the runways
could we actually
turn that buffer land into productive
land could we actually grow food for
livestock or even for us we looked at an
airport about the size of Adelaide and
the irrigation area where it was safe to
irrigate and we thought within that area
you could grow enough potatoes to feed a
hundred and forty thousand people per
year or enough rice to feed 40,000
people per year and with the money that
you get from the sale of that produce
you could contribute to or maybe even
eliminate the cost of the water that was
used to grow those crops and cool the
airport and now for carbon most of us
have ticked that little box when we were
booking our flights to say that we’re
happy to contribute a cost to offsetting
our carbon for that flight but I bet
we’ve thought I wonder where that carbon
is we trust it exists but wouldn’t it be
great if we could see it
wouldn’t it be also great if you could
actually encourage the airlines to
invest in the sprinklers the pipes the
pumps in exchange for the Carbon Farming
credits that could be generated and
traded in countries like Australia the
airlines would also get a carbon credit
for the fuel reduction related to the
cooler air that I talked about earlier
the next stages for this project are to
expand it hopefully over a wider area of
Adelaide Airport and also start the
conversation with other airports that
are interested in this approach and
hopefully one day soon I’ll be sitting
back on that plane eating my potato
curry on rice from that Airport farm
below as I gaze out the window at that
green oasis
knowing that because we’ve thought of
water in a different way we’ve come up
with and demonstrated a way that can
help us all adapt to climate change now
wouldn’t that be cool thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
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