Retrofitting buildings to become more environmentally friendly is a a growing industry within the green economy, but when the building is a 67,000 seat football stadium the task and the benefits are that much bigger. Lincoln Financial Field is the home of the Philadelphia Eagles and although the stadium is just 7.5 years old a huge eco-friendly initiative by the teams owner is on schedule to be ready by this summer. It did occur to me why weren’t many of these ideas built into the original stadium design with it being so new but apparently this was always in the plans for the facility.

The makeover will include the addition of eighty wind turbines along the upper facade of the stadium, some 2,500 solar panels on overhangs and building facades plus a 7.6 megawatt power plant in the parking area. The achievements will surely be reviewed by the National Football League and other teams may well see this as a challenge to upgrade the eco standing of their own arenas. The Eagles franchise is doing more though than the large renewable energy constructions but are also reviewing all products used in the stadium to try to transfer them to renewable sources where possible, for example even the beer cups are made from a corn based plastic.  Investment in the solar panels, turbines and power plant is anticipated to run at about $30 million but the fixed rate power costs (in tandem with SolarBlue) are expected to save the team $60 million over the next 20 years not to mention the huge savings in energy use – reduced carbon dioxide emissions mark the equivalent of taking more than 40,000 cars off of the road. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie explains:

“It’s smart business because it saves money and protects us against a rate hike,. but in owning and managing an NFL team that’s on national TV, to have that kind of iconic symbol converting to renewable energy, we hope it can be a good example and encourage other businesses to do even better than us.”

The Eagles stadium green retrofit to be complete this summer

While the giant wind turbines will be the most visible part of the program the club have been making commitments in all areas of their operations title the ‘Go Green’ campaign. At present some 80% of the stadiums trash is recycled with the remainder going to landfill but they aim to get closer to 95%, tree planting campaigns associated with the team in Philadelphia are in place and the entire organization’s employees are expected to recycle.  Currently the Philadelphia team are seen as the NFL poster child for greener operating practices and other clubs look to them for ideas and consultation. Currently only 12 NFL franchises out of 32 take part in the monthly green conference call for the league and the Eagles are the pacesetters.

If its possible with one franchise it should be possible for all. We’ll wait and see as I plan to write more about sports teams and their green initiatives throughout the year.