Geothermal to Mitigate Cancelled Flights

An interesting little tidbit I just found concerns using geothermal heat to mitigate the problem of cancelled flights due to ice.  Last Christmas, Heathrow Airport in London was shut down for nearly 5 days due to an untimely ice storm.  Obviously, this resulted in thousands of unhappy holiday travelers.  So, to mitigate this problem in the future, Heathrow is turning to geothermal heat.

The British Airports Authority has been under a lot of pressure ever since to make sure nothing in this scale ever happens again.  So, Heathrow is planning to use a ground loop system to take the heat from the tarmac in the summer, store it underground, and use it to heat water which will flow through subsurface pipes beneath where the planes are parked in the winter.  

This system would be fairly simple, but could have substantial upfront costs seeing as significant modification to the concrete stands would be in order.  So far, the BAA has pledged 50 million pounds toward the project, but this is just the beginning.

Just another example of how geothermal energy can be used on a small scale for huge improvements; it doesn't always have to generate electricity.