A recent USA Today article corralled details of the US airports that currently have, or are planning to have, renewable energy systems installed to help with their staggeringly high electric needs. Solar electric panels and innovative wind turbines are the two technologies the article considers. There are other ways to save energy–Boston Logan, for example, has a terminal that makes clever use of passive solar and gray water recycling–but these are definitely the splashiest.

This niche market maybe shouldn’t be so niche. Solar panels on the large, flat, sunny roofs of transportation facilities–huge consumers of electricity–if they reduced operating costs enough, could perhaps help combat the ever-rising costs of vehicular fuel. It is the sheer volume of the electricity consumed that makes this a hard proposition; for example, 2,800 solar panels installed at SFO provide enough power for just the daytime lights of one terminal.  12,000 panels installed on an empty 20-acre field in Fresno, however, manage to offset about 50% of the entire airport’s usage, saving the airport about $.3 million in electric costs last year alone–exceeding projected savings for the project. Think about the surfaces at an airport, the warehouses, terminals, expanses of fields cordoned off by miles of runway. Not all airports have Fresno’s convenient 20 acres, but they do all have the kind of surfaces that make excellent homes for solar.

I travel a great deal. This means I have a lot of extra baggage in the form of carbon guilt…and maybe that’s why the idea of clean energy-powered transit facilities pleases me so much. We don’t have replacements for jet fuel yet, and biodiesel for trains and trucks comes with a slew of questions about the greater environmental and agricultural effects of relying too heavily upon it. So “clean” travel almost has to start elsewhere.

We learned from Icarus that it’s not such a great idea to fly too close to the sun–but no reason at all why we can’t bring the sun down to power our wings.