Industrial logistics and environmental sustainability
AKNO‘s experience in constructing buildings for industrial logistics, especially its famous business parks, is reflected, first and foremost, in the construction of functional, aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-manage buildings, and in its focus on environmentally sustainable architecture.
In order to follow the principles of eco-sustainable architecture, as it has developed since the Seventies, it is necessary to tend as much as possible to use only renewable energy sources, to change construction procedures and the systems that are installed in the building to discharge into the environment a number of pollutants that the environment itself can metabolise, reducing energy consumption as much as possible.
AKNO‘s work in recent years has focused above all on creating buildings for industrial logistics that follow the dictates of sustainable architecture, thanks to the best technological innovations proposed at the highest level by experts in the field.
First of all, the link between eco-sustainability and management savings must be emphasised to not fall into the trap of opposing respect for the environment to proper economic management. In fact, building an eco-sustainable building means studying systems that reduce energy consumption to the bare essentials to limit its environmental impact, and this translates, over time, into a net saving in running costs.
In other words, many of the construction techniques implemented by AKNO, such as the use of glass roofs to reduce the need for artificial lighting, the use of thermal break windows and doors, the construction of rainwater recovery systems and domotic systems to manage the lighting in the various rooms, based on their current occupancy, are not only actions aimed at protecting the environment but also make it possible to achieve significant savings in running costs.
In this way, AKNO not only strives to create functional industrial logistics buildings built using the best technology and with a low environmental impact, but it can also guarantee very low running costs thanks to these tools.
Industrial logistics and environmental sustainability
Concrete actions are the most important thing for AKNO. Therefore, we came up with the idea of creating a specialised division that we have called AKNO Energy to act in the field of eco-sustainability and energy saving in particular.
The work of AKNO Energy is based on two parallel strands, both of which are crucial to reducing the environmental impact of our business parks: producing energy from renewable sources and reducing energy consumption.
A good way to move towards the generalised use of energy produced from renewable sources is to equip our buildings, already at project level, with green energy self-production systems, such as photovoltaic solar panel systems and those for the production and use of biogas.
Thanks to a photovoltaic solar panel, it is possible to directly transform the sun’s rays into electricity available in the building’s system, with much less environmental impact than buying energy from the grid. It is, therefore, AKNO‘s practice to install as many solar panels as possible on the roofs of its business parks and thus achieve substantial clean energy production directly on site.
On the other hand, biogas plants are able to produce a mixture of gaseous fuels, mainly methane, through the fermentation of biological material by specific bacteria operating in large heated volumes, called digesters. The raw material to be fermented can come from various sources, including municipal waste, agricultural and livestock waste.
Generally, depending on the area in which the building is constructed, we try to create a biogas plant capable of using the specific type of raw material produced, as waste, by the activities present in the area. In this way, using waste that would in, any case, have to be disposed of, generating an additional environmental impact, we obtain a fuel that can be used directly both to produce electricity and to get heat for the building’s heating system.
LEED protocol certification
In addition to constructing buildings that limit energy waste and operate as far as possible with energy from renewable sources, AKNO is also concerned about the construction site’s eco-sustainability on which the building is built, which usually has a significant environmental impact.
To achieve this result, we are inspired by the principles of the LEED protocol (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which provides for a series of measures and tools to be used for truly low environmental impact site management. In particular, we focus on reducing the amount of dust dispersed into the surrounding environment due to construction or demolition activities, limiting overall energy consumption, the impact of our work on the water system, and the proper disposal of construction waste or debris to landfills.
Thanks to the work of our AKNO Energy division and the support of the LEED protocol, we are concretely committed to reducing the environmental impact of the construction and operation of our business parks, in which structural and functional quality is always accompanied by maximum eco-sustainability.
