Getting about Malpensa Airport in an electric car

Getting around Malpensa Airport is done in electric cars. For years, SEA, the company that manages the airport, has worked on a strategy of sustainable development for its airports. There are many projects that have this as their objective, and today SEA is presenting the latest initiative: the introduction of twenty-one electric cars (eleven Peugeot iOns and ten Citroen C-Zeros, for operations on the airport territory of Milan Malpensa.

The vehicles went into service with a rental agreement with the company ARVAL, last November, and, until today, they have travelled 50,904 km, with an average distance of 2424 km per vehicle. At Linate, SEA has installed six charging pillars, situated in various parts of the territory; these are in addition to the opportunities for recharging provided in the airport’s workshops and maintenance areas. The average range of the electric cars is 90-100 km, when they are fully charged.

In the past, SEA had begun to introduce electric vehicles, through its subsidiary at the time, SEA Handling. At the two Milan airports, there are 372 electric vehicles (nearly 27% of all vehicles) operating, particularly towing tractors for luggage, and conveyor belts for loading/unloading operations. The next goal, which is currently being looked into, will be to use electric runway buses for passengers (Cobus), which are part of SEA’s vehicle fleet.

SEA aims to reduce the environmental impact of the airports further. Today, the CO₂ emissions attributed to airport activity are limited to 3%, and for the air and vehicle traffic, they are 23% and 74%, respectively (WSP Environment and Energy data). At both of the airports, E-Vai electric cars (owned by the Ferrovie Nord Group) have been available to passengers since 2012, and are included in the car-sharing network, which can be found in many parts of Lombardy. Like Linate, the placement of free charging pillars and parking places reserved for private electric cars is also being considered at Milan Malpensa.

Still on the subject of reducing the impact of vehicle traffic, the T1-T2 railway link, which will bring people to Malpensa’s Terminal 2 directly from Milan, is currently under construction.

 

Thanks to a number of measures (use of LED and low consumption bulbs, both inside and outside; turning off lights in the areas and on the runways that are not used at night; computerisation and introduction of measuring instruments for the division and analysis of the energy consumption; optimisation and regulation of the temperature inside the terminals on the basis of the how crowded places are, in order to use only the energy strictly necessary), SEA achieved annual energy savings of nearly 13.188MWh (-7,4%, 2014 data compared to 2009), over a period of time when Malpensa’s Terminal 1 was completed, increasing the area by one third.

ACI Europe (Airports Council International Europe) acknowledges the “neutrality” level of the airports of Milan Linate and Milan Malpensa, as a result of achieving top efficiency in the reduction of CO₂ emissions, at a European level.