The largest stadium in Holland aims at being Europe’s leader in sustainable energy. Next year it should reach complete neutrality in terms of carbon dioxide, suing several features.

Stadiums, due to their large scale, are significant sources of carbon dioxide. While it’s not possible to stop that altogether, it can be minimalized or balanced. Currently more and more stadia use their roofs for solar energy production, re-use rainwater, but few can match Amsterdam ArenA.

The stadium has enough photovoltaic panels on its roof to supply 270 households year round (930,000 kWh). For a venue with over 1 million visitors every season it’s still only 10% of the demand, but then there’s also wind energy produced by turbines places in well-exposed locations.

Photo: Willi Thiel (cc: by-nc-sa)

Amsterdam ArenA is supplied with clean heating. The heat is a byproduct of Nuon energy centrals. Previously the company was releasing this excess heat to the atmosphere, now it’s directed to the stadium. Analogically, in during hot summer months ArenA is cooled by cold from the outside. This time it’s cold water from a nearby artificial lake – water is being pumped through the stadium to cool it down and then returned to the reservoir.

Partnership with Nuon is expected to make the stadium energy-efficient enough to reach a carbon-neutral blueprint in 2015, becoming the leader in sustainable energy.