Carbon reduction effectiveness and efficiency of earth-berming design for speed skating ovals

Abstract

Earth-berming design is a common energy-saving practice for speed skating ovals. This study explores the impacts of different earth-berming conditions on the carbon emissions during the operation phase of the venue and evaluates the carbon reduction efficiency by taking into account the incremental carbon emissions caused by the excavation during the construction phase. In this study, three different climate zones were selected as the study environment to simulate the carbon reduction effect of two basic forms of mainstream-scaled speed skating ovals under various earth-berming conditions and to summarise the fitting equations of carbon reduction efficiency. The study found that the total annual carbon emissions (CE) of both forms are the lowest in the severe cold zone in general, and the decreased carbon (dCE) from the earthberming design positively correlates with the excavated volume (V) with a maximum value of 98.9tCO2e/y. Among all regions, the maximum dCE for all forms is highest in the severe cold zone, 5.1% and 9.8% more than that in the hot-summer-cold-winter zone, which has the worst performances. The carbon reduction efficiency of the earth-berming design was measured by critical gain time (T). The earth-berming covariates and T for both forms could be fitted by a quadratic equation, which showed that the larger the burial depth on the large-span space side of Form 1 compared to the auxiliary space side, the smaller the T-value, whereas the greater the V of Form 2, the smaller the T-value.