Can decarbonising airports make a difference?
Inés Idzikowski Pérez
Drawing on AECOM’s work with more than 30 airports worldwide, Inés Idzikowski Pérez explores how decarbonising airport infrastructure and operations can deliver meaningful emissions reductions while supporting growth, strengthening resilience and preparing airports for future challenges
Aviation is a notoriously hard sector to decarbonise. The combustion of jet fuel can account for up to 99% of the emissions of large international hubs. This means that any effort to decarbonise ground operations is likely to be dwarfed by emissions of the aircraft that use them. And yet scores of airports around the world have embarked on serious sustainability programmes. Is it worth it? Why do they bother?
The answer lies in how you think about airports and what they do. They are so much more than just a collection of terminals, runways and control towers. I think of them as mini cities with their own critical power, energy and IT infrastructure, transport and logistics hubs, commercial real estate, and hospitality operations. Worldwide, all buildings and forms of transport account for more than 60% of global emissions, while aviation contributes less than 3% of the total. Perspective matters.
Because they are mini cities, they are as exposed as any other built environment to climate impacts, and ever more stringent environmental regulation. In this context, decarbonisation efforts make complete sense. Abating emissions makes airports more resilient to climate risks. It helps decouple airport expansion from emissions. And it keeps them a step ahead of regulatory changes.
image: Shutterstock
“Worldwide, all buildings and forms of transport account for more than 60% of global emissions, while aviation contributes less than 3%. Perspective matters”
We know how to decarbonise buildings. A good strategy is to begin with low-tech, and decidedly unsexy, interventions. The biggest carbon savings are often achieved by replacing aging utility backbones to support the demands of modern terminals and future public transit connections. At San Diego International (SAN), an aging central utility plant was a significant source of stationary emissions. Electrifying the facility unlocked the airport’s largest single emissions reduction opportunity.
Scale this up to wider airport operations, and the potential is immense. AECOM was the programme manager for SAN’s largest ever expansion project, where the integration of various sustainable design and construction principles, from naturally ventilated check-in pavilions to one-site renewables and stormwater management plans, earned the airport a Leadership and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum award – a world first.
“The biggest carbon savings are often achieved by replacing aging utility backbones to support the demands of modern terminals and future public transit connections”
One of the key lessons from AECOM’s work in more than 30 airports is that it is important to embed decarbonisation into the entire life cycle of an airport’s functions and operations. This is decarbonisation as investment planning, not carbon accounting; it’s factoring in when and how airports need to invest in tackling their carbon emissions.
The elephant on the runway is, of course, the aircraft itself – responsible for the lion’s share of an airport’s Scope 3 emissions. And here it’s important to note that while airport operators do not control aviation or its global emissions, they can and do exert a big influence when aircraft are on the ground. So airports can electrify ground service equipment; they can connect an aircraft directly to a terminal’s power and ventilation sources as opposed to having the aircraft use their own system’s jet fuel; and they can support the adoption of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). San Francisco International Airport is a strong advocate for such fuels and thanks to extensive stakeholder engagement, it has achieved a 1.5 per cent take-up rate.
I will be sharing more lessons from AECOM’s airport decarbonisation projects at AIR on 29/30 September in London. I look forward to seeing you there.
Inés Idzikowski Pérez is AECOM’s Net Zero Lead, Europe & India