SNØ and environment
Are you wondering how SNØ impacts the environment? How much energy it actually takes to keep a building as large as SNØ cold all year round? How SNØ contributes to the UN's sustainability goals? What does it mean that SNØ is a plus building? And what is the ultimate goal for SNØ's environmental contribution in the future? Get answers to this and much more in the text below.
SNØ - a plus building
Did you know that SNØ is actually a plus building? This means that the SNØ building produces more energy than it uses. The surplus energy that we produce goes to the local area, in the form of both district heating and district cooling. From a sustainability perspective regarding to the environment, we can state that we produce around 23% more energy for heating of other buildings than we use for electricity from the grid.
In addition, we dare to say that SNØ also has an infinite sustainability perspective with regard to the UN's sustainability goal number 3 - Ensure good health and promote quality of life for everyone, regardless of age. Because SNØ offers skiing and cultural fun that everyone can take part in. Our vision is to inspire more people to do activities that make them happy. Because we believe that activity, good health choices and a feeling of mastery are basic prerequisites for people's positive development. It does not matter whether it is Olympic gold medals or just getting off the couch that is the ambition - SNØ is for everyone, regardless of skill level.
About the building
Before we started building SNØ, we visited ski halls around Europe to see how they had solved cooling down the large indoor ski slopes, as well as listen to their experiences and see if there was room for improvement. And there was.
That is why have used the very latest technology, and are significantly more energy efficient than other halls in Europe. SNØ is planned based on the use of the least possible energy for cold production. It is about good insulation of walls, ceilings and in the ground around the entire arena. The arena also maintains a passive house standard when it comes to tightness, which is very important so as not to leak large amounts of cold energy. If the 500 m long building was not tight, it would function as an 80 m high chimney where all the cold would flow out of the building.
Furthermore, we have invested in the best refrigeration machines for cold production with the natural refrigerant carbon dioxide (CO2), and the best heat pumps for heat recovery. We supply the surplus heat to the district heating network, so that all heat that can be recovered goes out to the buildings around the ski arena. This has meant that we have received some financial support from the state-owned company Enova in two rounds; to several of our measures with the building and the technical plant, and to "interconnection and transfer" of heat to the district heating network.
Power plant and energy flows
We use electric power to drive cooling machines that take out heat from the air inside SNØ and thus cool SNØ. The "waste product" of refrigeration machines is "low temperature" heat. We also use electric power to drive heat pumps that raise this heat from the cooling production, so that it can be used as district heating. The heat pumps' "waste product" is cold that goes to district cooling. The district heating is delivered to Akershus Energi Varme's district heating network and sent for heating and tap water in homes and commercial buildings in the area. Excess cooling is delivered to commercial buildings in Snøbyen - the district that is built around SNØ.
Both cold and heat
Of course, a lot of energy is required to keep the temperature in our 36,000 sqm large ski area and 470,000 cubic meters of voluminous building cold (the air keeps from about -4 to -2 degrees).
The figure above shows that approximately 5700 megawatt hours (MWh) will enter the arena annually in the form of electricity and approx. 7000 MWh out of the arena as heat energy - which corresponds to the annual electricity consumption of around 350 detached houses. The energy center for SNØ is located outside the arena itself and produces cold using three large cooling machines that use CO2 (carbon dioxide) as a refrigerant. The power plant consists of cooling machines and heat pumps. The production of cold creates heat, and this surplus heat goes back to the energy center for recycling. The heat pumps raise the temperature of the surplus heat from 40 degrees to over 75 degrees in order for it to be negotiable for Akershus Energi Varme for use in the district heating network. In addition, some heat is recovered directly as it already maintains a high enough temperature.
The calculation is thus as follows: the 5700 megawatt hours of electricity that enter gives a total of 8700 MWh in the form of cold, and 7000 MWh in the form of heat. For every kilowatt hour that goes into the building, we get 2.75 kilowatt hours out - which gives a so-called efficiency of 2.75. The energy we use is thus less than the one we bring back to society via the district heating and district cooling network. This means that we deliver more heat energy to the environment than we ourselves use of energy to drive SNØ, which makes us a plus building.
Ambition of solar cells
It is important for us to take care of the environment and constantly improve our sustainability contribution. Therefore, we are currently working to get a solar cell system on the roof of SNØ that will produce electricity for SNØ; in other words, we want to turn "sun into snow." Our ultimate goal is to be able to produce so much electricity ourselves that we do not have to use electricity from the grid. - Who knows? Maybe we can do it!
Do you have more questions for us?
Feel free to contact us at [kontakt@snooslo.no](mailto: kontakt@snooslo.no), and we will do our best to give you a good answer.