Energy consumption and CO2 emission responsibilities of terminal buildings: A case study for the future Istanbul International Airport

Airport terminal buildings are used to be treated as stand-alone buildings for their energy performance. Previous studies in the literature fall short of recognizing functional and physical relations of terminal buildings with landside and airside airport operations. In order to avoid these shortcomings, this paper extends the terminal building energy performance analysis to a broader context and expands the analysis envelope to expose the true impact of a terminal building on energy consumption and the combined emissions that it is responsible for. In this respect, this study investigates whether a green terminal building in a new airport planned for the city of Istanbul with an annual 150 million passenger capacity may off-set the loss of CO2 sequestration potential from cutting at least 657000 trees for the airport construction or not. Additional CO2 emissions corresponding to the estimated longer approach and climb out flights due to the unfavorable site selection have also been considered. This article compares a business as usual type of terminal building with four green terminal building scenarios having different CO2 emission reduction potentials. The first-law and the second-law analysis of thermodynamics have shown that constructing a green terminal building complex may not offset its CO2 emissions responsibility unless a very intensive re-forestation activity is implemented and the site is properly re-selected. As a result, this study has exemplified the essential boundaries for energy consumption analysis envelope for an airport terminal building and its true emissions responsibility.