Seattle airport is on track to be North America’s greenest port
SEATTLE—Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, known as Sea-Tac, is on its way to becoming the nation’s first airport heated entirely by renewable natural gas.
Earlier this year, the Port of Seattle issued a request for proposals, calling for RNG service to supply Sea-Tac’s boilers and bus fueling system, which produce more than 80 percent of the port’s emissions. Under the new service, RNG could possibly replace all of the current natural gas. If that goal is reached, it would result in a greenhouse gas reduction of 18,000 metric tons per year.
“The port can play a major role in creating an RNG market because we offer a stable, long-term use of gas,” said Arlyn Purcell, Port of Seattle’s director of aviation environment and sustainability. “If we can attract a project developer to supply the airport, this will spur more opportunities to feed the current gas pipeline with RNG rather than have landfills or digesters flare the gas on-site or allow their methane emissions to escape into the air.”
This is just the latest environmental initiative from the Port of Seattle, which has taken an aggressive approach to attaining greenhouse gas reduction goals under its so-called Century Agenda.
The Century Agenda, most recently amended in 2017, establishes four key strategies for the future, including: “Be the greenest and most energy-efficient port in North America,” a goal supported by a detailed list of wide-ranging objectives. Among those objectives is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations by 50 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2030 and the achievement of carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative status by 2050. Replacing natural gas with RNG would put the port ahead of its goal for 2030 and well on the way to achieving its goal for 2050. Project costs—as well as the potential source of the RNG—will be determined once the proposals are received and evaluated.
The shift to RNG is timely. Nationwide incentives under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS2, have encouraged an increasing number of landfills and other RNG producers to put their gas on the pipeline for transportation-sector use. At the same time, the Port of Seattle has been exploring the use of RNG in its boilers, in part because the port uses approximately six times more gas volume for heating fuel than for transportation fuel at the airport.
Responses to the Port of Seattle’s RFP were due April 12. The port expects to review submissions and award a contract by the end of the year.