Eco Factor: International airport designed to be powered by renewable sources of energy.
San Diego has been desperate for a new airport for years. The existing facility is too crowded since it is serving a metropolitan area of 3 million people. Short on land space for a new international airport, OceanWorksDevelopment is planning to use the Pacific Ocean for the same.
With a group of 40 architects and planners, the company has come up with a serious proposal to construct an international airport off the California coast, which the company hopes to be a $20 billion business plan. The company has also put in a claim with federal government for airport rights to a 40,000-square-mile swath of the Pacific.
The airport would be a floating platform, permanently moored in water about 8-13 miles offshore. The airport would only be the roof of the superstructure, and under it would be 200 million square feet of rentable space for hotels, restaurants and free trade zones. The plan is to power the airport with renewable energy harnessed from wind, waves and ocean currents.
For transporting passengers, OceanWorksDevelopment would depend either on an underwater light rail connection – a submerged floating tunnel – or a series of fast ferries running to a string of terminals up and down the coast.
The structure will also have a renewably powered desalination plant to turn ocean water into potable water, large enough to supply both the gigantic structure itself, but land-locked San Diego too.
Via: CleanTechnica/Infrastructurist
