The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism aims to introduce a system in fiscal 2010 to provide 30% of the cooling energy at New Chitose Airport terminal building in summer from snow collected in winter. The ministry collected snow last winter at the airport and confirmed that it could retain up to 45% of it by September by covering it with heat-insulating materials. It has concluded that the snow could be used to chill the liquid used in the airport’s cooling system in summer and that doing so would lead to a cut of some 2,100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to the officials.

New Chitose Airport is an airport located in Chitose and Tomakomai, Hokkaidō, Japan, serving the Sapporo metropolitan area. By land area, it is the largest airport in Hokkaidō. In FY 2006, it served 18,536,350 passengers, third in Japan to only Narita and Haneda.