The heart of St-Johann

Crucial for the company

Growing environmental awareness

The tunnel constructors of the St-Johann site

Past and present converge

The future starts here

End of coal-fired power at the St-Johann site

Energy target value as the guiding principle

Innovative solutions for campus buildings

Geostorage facility halves energy consumption

From coal to sun

For more than 100 years it was the “heart” of the St-Johann site in Basel: the boiler house in which a large share of the energy required at the plant was generated. Now the coal bunkers are empty, the fire beneath the steam boilers has gone out and demolition has commenced. Today, solar energy is used, while geostorage facilities are simultaneously being constructed on a nearby building site to supply new buildings with heating and cooling. This change in the approach to energy and emissions is particularly evident at the campus in Basel, the former HQ site of Sandoz.

Text by Michael Mildner and Goran Mijuk

Photos from the St-Johann plant in the 1930s. Coal slag heap in front of the boiler house.

Table of contents

The heart of St-Johann

Crucial for the company

Growing environmental awareness

The tunnel constructors of the St-Johann site

Past and present converge

The future starts here

End of coal-fired power at the St-Johann site

Energy target value as the guiding principle

Innovative solutions for campus buildings

Geostorage facility halves energy consumption

This article was originally published in October 2015.

When Walter Mebert and his colleagues from the energy group convene at the Novartis Campus in Basel shortly before Christmas, they always reserve the same place: a corner room on the first floor of the Dodici restaurant. The food there is good and the service is friendly, sure. But that is not the reason why they always make the same choice each year – what really interests them is the unobstructed view of their former workplace, the boiler house, and the energy plant buildings.

Although it is many years since they retired, they are all still fascinated by energy issues, and each of the 20 or so members of the “energy group,” as they call themselves, enjoys discussing current developments at Novartis. Most of them once used a coal shovel to heat the steam boiler; today they are keen to learn about the latest energy systems on the campus.

Workers heat the steam boiler with coal.

The heart of St-Johann

Walter Mebert is one of the most active representatives of the energy group; two to three times a year he organizes excursions, information events and meetings for the members. Mebert, who trained as an equipment engineer and then spent some years traveling the world as a sailor, started his career exactly 50 years ago in 1965, when he was hired as a boilerman at Sandoz.

Back then he was 23 years old. Today, aged 73, Mebert can look back on many years of experience in the domain of energy generation and environmental protection. Following his stint in the boiler house, he worked until his retirement in the planning, implementation and maintenance of the energy supply and sewage tunnels, which still today transport energy and water between the buildings.

His colleague Paul Kneubuehler has a clear answer why the members of the energy group have never lost interest in their former workplace. He moves towards the window and points at the boiler house: “What you see here is more than just one of many buildings on the site,” he announces with pride. “For us it is still the heart of St-Johann. Here we produced energy that was subsequently used for production, research and heating throughout the entire plant.”

A worker checks the fire in the steam boiler.

Crucial for the company

“Boiler houses” describe buildings containing one or more steam boilers with a furnace. They were essential for the provision of steam, hot water and heat energy for production, laboratories and administrative buildings – from the founding of the Kern & Sandoz chemical plant in 1886 until the decommissioning of the last boiler house in 2014. With its own power house, the company was able to produce cheap energy and guarantee supplies.

In the mid-1960s, when Walter Mebert worked in the boiler house, steam boilers were largely operated with coal. “In those days, rail wagons were constantly arriving with replenishments from the German Saar land; the tracks went straight through the plant directly to the boiler house. At peak times there were 55 wagons with more than 1300 tons of coal each week that we emptied into the coal bunkers,” explains Mebert. Together with his colleague, René Ris, he remembers how they emptied the last wagon. Ris describes what happened: “It was in the depth of winter and the coal was one big frozen mass. We had to thaw it with steam and shovel it out of the oozing wagon. It was such a slog that no more charges of coal were ever ordered again afterwards.”

It was hard work in the boiler house, but the pay was good thanks to shift, public holiday and standby bonuses. The boilermen only had free weekends in the summer. Considerably more energy was needed during winter. “The boilers were never idle during the winter and we worked in three shifts around the clock on every day of the week including public holidays,” explains Mebert. This was the case over Christmas and New Year as well. “On Christmas Eve the foreman always brought a cake that his wife had baked specially for us.”

Some of the energy supply pipes were fitted to the outside of the buildings right up to the 1980s.

Growing environmental awareness

Although the steam boilers were heated with huge quantities of fossil fuels, environmental protection and sustainable energy supply were generally not a major issue in Basel’s chemical industry until the start of the 1970s. Some initial approaches were already underway, such as the creation of a joint industrial working group for soil, water and air hygiene, but there were still no legally binding provisions or technical resources in areas such as cleaning and measurement technology.

Stronger momentum only came with the incorporation of the environmental protection article in the Swiss Federal Constitution. People increasingly became aware of the problem both within the industry and among the population at large.

Environmental protection was consequently stepped up. The “acid rain” debate at the start of the 1980s, which culminated in the Swiss Clean Air Act of 1985, and the Schweizerhalle fire led to the introduction of additional environmental measures.

In line with this development, the firing in the boiler house also became more environment-friendly. The original, coal-fired boiler was decommissioned, and replaced by two large Sulzer boilers in 1962. These new boilers could run with different fuels. Until 2014, when the boiler house was shut down, the firing system switched from coal to heavy fuel oil, then to light fuel oil, then to extra light fuel oil and finally to natural gas. Advances in combustion technology combined with the use of ecologically harmless heating materials helped reduce emissions markedly.

View of the St-Johann site in 1990.

The tunnel constructors of the St-Johann site

Besides greenhouse gas emissions wastewater was also a major issue for Basel’s chemical industry. Sandoz pushed for the realization of a sewage plant in Alsace for which a state treaty had already been signed. However, due to coordination difficulties between the involved parties, it took several years before this project could be completed.

While work on the new treatment plant struggled to get off the ground, Sandoz took the initiative to build new energy supply and sewage pipes at the St-Johann plant. For this reason, the company built a network of tunnels under the St. Johann site, which also included wastewater disposal pipes, which collected different wastewater sources.

Mebert, who in 1970 moved from the boiler house to the energy management team, witnessed at first hand the planning and implementation of this pioneering project, which cost around 30 million Swiss francs. He remembers: “The new energy supply tunnels were dug six meters deep below the factory grounds. They measured roughly four times four meters and formed a fine network connecting every building throughout the entire site. We were even able to ride our bikes through these mile-long tunnels.”

View of one of the steam boilers installed in the boiler house in 1962.

Past and present converge

The sewage tunnels were built several meters below the energy supply tunnels. These were used for the first time in the history of the plant to collect the different types of wastewater and transport them for individual disposal: Chemically contaminated industrial wastewater was pretreated mechanically and then taken to the ARA Huningue industrial sewage treatment plant, which was finally completed in 1982; domestic wastewater went via pipe underneath the Dreirosen bridge to the sewage plant ARA Basel-City; rain and cooling wastewater was discharged directly into the Rhine. The additional safety system, which entailed the construction of special gullies throughout the entire site and a retention basin constructed for 25 million francs in 1991, ensured protection in case of accidents.

This system of energy supply and sewage tunnels that is still in use today is a frequent topic of discussion between Walter Mebert and Felix Finardi, an energy expert who advises Novartis in the field of design and construction management. The system is also a good example of how past, present and future converge on the Novartis Campus in Basel.

Finardi, who is aged 55, enjoys meeting the pensioners from the energy group. Not only do they all share the same enthusiasm for energy issues, but today’s campus team can also benefit from the achievements of their predecessors. Finardi cites the following example: “The energy supply and sewage system of the 1970s was one of the reasons why Vittorio Lampugnani structured the campus in the way we see it today. It enables us to provide all new campus buildings with supply and discharge pipes in a straightforward manner and additional underground connections are only built where this is absolutely necessary. Anything else would have been extremely costly and disproportionately expensive,” explains Finardi.

Close-up of a steam boiler.

The future starts here

At the beginning of the new millennium, when Walter Mebert retired, Novartis stepped up its environmental protection measures further. The year 2000 marks an important milestone in the company’s energy policy: Novartis was one of the first companies to sign the Global Compact of the United Nations, which at that time was the most important initiative for corporate sustainability. By signing, the participating companies committed themselves to above-average and exemplary protection of the environment.

Through this step, Novartis also clearly signaled the need to focus its environmental policy beyond waste disposal onto a long-term approach to responsible action. Or, as the sustainability report for the Basel sites puts it: “Novartis aspires to be known as a responsible corporate citizen. This involves doing everything we can to operate in a manner that is sustainable – economically, socially and environmentally.”

Walter Mebert at his former workplace in the energy plant on the St-Johann site.

End of coal-fired power at the St-Johann site

This focus on sustainability also meant that the era of smoking chimneys was finally over at the St-Johann site.

“When we started planning the new campus, it quickly became clear that a 60-meter-high chimney no longer fitted in with the concept,” recalls Finardi. “On top of this, the provisions concerning CO2 emissions are constantly being tightened. The example of the recently introduced ‘carbon pricing,’ for which Novartis has set an ambitious target of 100 US dollars per ton of CO2, underlines this vividly – even more emphasis will be placed in future investments on ensuring the lowest possible CO2 emissions. The company’s global energy strategy also envisages a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 compared with 2010. It goes without saying that none of these goals could have been achieved with the old steam boiler system.”

To make sure that these high standards are actually met when expanding the campus, Felix Finardi collaborates closely with the planning teams for the new buildings. He provides power supply solutions that help reconcile the ideas of the architects with the energy requirements. The focus here is on structural measures, the use of energy-efficient equipment and a high share of renewable energy sources.

Solar cells on the glass building of Frank Gehry.

Energy target value as the guiding principle

Together with the regulators and external experts, Novartis defined a procedure in 2003 that serves as a binding principle for the company’s new buildings. It involves setting an energy target value for each building that the planning team is required to meet; an annual review of energy consumption is then used to determine any need for improvement.

When setting the energy target value, the specific use of a building must always be taken into account. Most state-of-the-art laboratory buildings, for example, have an energy consumption per square meter that is around four to six times that of pure office buildings. “The reason for this lies in the highly specialized and energy-intensive facilities that are used, for instance, to carry out analyses and for which there is often no energy-saving alternative,” explains Ivan Raffainer, Energy Manager at Novartis.

But as well as the efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and energy consumption, there is also another goal that may not be ignored: The supply of energy must be guaranteed at all times. “Obviously with the boiler house we had full control over heat production on the St-Johann site; this is another important reason why the facility remained in use for so long,” says Raffainer.

“Today Novartis maintains long-term relations with external partners. Having said this, we are not completely dependent on energy supplies,” underlines Raffainer. “Thanks to the innovative building concepts that we have already realized in the new buildings of the campus and will also continue to implement in the future, we are able to produce some of the required energy on-site – only in a much more environment-friendly and sustainable manner than with the former boiler house solution.”

View of the green roofs of the campus.

Innovative solutions for campus buildings

For example, in the Square 3 office building, energy is obtained from a sewage channel that runs next to the building. Using a heat pump, the water is brought to the required temperature level and distributed within the building, thereby covering heating and cooling requirements. Another example is the Fabrikstrasse 15 building by architect Frank Gehry. As this building comprises a large amount of glass, it was necessary to integrate solar protection in order to regulate the indoor temperature. The building is protected against solar radiation through solar cells, which also produce some of the power consumed by the building.

Alternative energy sources therefore play a leading role in the energy concept of the campus. Furthermore, thanks to the location next to the Rhine, it is possible to save energy by using water from the Rhine to cool the buildings.

However, the latest and most progressive solution for heating and cooling the campus is the geostorage technology that has been applied at the Fabrikstrasse 18 and Asklepios 8 office buildings and the mixed laboratory and office building of Virchow 16. At these buildings the ground is used as a seasonal heat or cold storage facility so that energy can be generated in an emission-free manner not only for heating but also for cooling.

The operating principle of the geostorage facility is as simple as it is impressive. In the summer, warm outside air is cooled with cold water and used for air conditioning. The water heated in this way is taken in 32 U-pipe probes around 220 meters below the building where the ground consequently warms up by roughly 10 degrees to 18 degrees Celsius. The cooled water then flows back to the surface into the cooling circuit. In the winter, cold water is pumped down into the ground where it picks up the geothermal energy stored during the summer and emits it within the building as heating energy.

Earth probe drillings for the building at Fabrikstrasse 18.

Geostorage facility halves energy consumption

The energy experts at Novartis are convinced that this technology can also serve as the solution for future campus buildings. Novartis is even assuming a pioneering role within Switzerland through its use of geostorage technology. “We are extremely satisfied with the savings achieved so far – compared with a conventional office building it has been possible to halve the total energy consumption of Fabrikstrasse 18,” says Felix Finardi.

The members of the energy group were also fascinated when they visited the building site at Fabrikstrasse 18 last year. Felix Finardi had organized the guided tour together with Walter Mebert, and a large number of pensioners turned up to gain first-hand information about this innovative project. “It’s absolutely amazing what the lads are able to achieve today,” says Walter Mebert. “The progress since the time of coal-fired heating really is incredible. It’ll still be worth our while visiting the campus even when the boiler house is demolished.”

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