Airport carbon dioxide emissions cut by 200,000 tonnes in 2015/16: ACI

The pro­gramme is now in its eighth year with 182 accred­ited air­ports in 54 countries.

Writ­ing for Air­port World, Ms Git­tens asser­ted that ACI’s Air­port Car­bon Emis­sions Report­ing Tool (ACERT) ver­sion 4.0 is “a valu­able tool in assist­ing air­ports in man­aging their GHG [green­house gas] emis­sions [and] helps them pro­gress toward accreditation”.

While cli­mate change is “the most press­ing envir­on­ment­al prob­lem the world shares”, oth­er envir­on­ment­al con­cerns related to air­ports are import­ant; “noise, loc­al air and water qual­ity chief among them”, she wrote.

The Inter­na­tion­al Civil Avi­ation Organ­iz­a­tion (ICAO) Com­mit­tee on Avi­ation Envir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion (CAEP) is “a key focus of ACI’s activ­ity” because it “cov­ers a wide range of meas­ures on envir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion ger­mane to aviation.

“Most recently, it agreed a new stand­ard of CO2 for air­craft, and has com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing guid­ance on com­munity engagement.

“ACI will make sure that CAEP and the inter­na­tion­al civil avi­ation author­it­ies under­stand the import­ance of well struc­tured, and con­struct­ive com­munity engagement.

“Air­ports recog­nise that they are mem­bers of the com­munit­ies in which they oper­ate and need per­mis­sion to exist and to grow if neces­sary to accom­mod­ate the demand for air service.

“ACI will con­tin­ue to work in part­ner­ship with gov­ern­ments, reg­u­lat­ors and oth­er avi­ation stake­hold­ers to ensure that we do our part in sup­port­ing sus­tain­able tour­ism this year and in the years to come.”

Full column at Air­port World.

The four levels of Air­port Car­bon Accred­it­a­tion. Source: ACI

What is Airport Carbon Accreditation?

Accord­ing to the Air­port Car­bon Accred­it­a­tion web­site, it is “the only insti­tu­tion­ally-endorsed, car­bon man­age­ment cer­ti­fic­a­tion stand­ard for airports”.

There are four levels of cer­ti­fic­a­tion: Map­ping, Reduc­tion, Optim­isa­tion, and Neutrality.

Each level builds upon the achieve­ments of the pre­vi­ous one. For example, Neut­ral­ity includes all of the pre­vi­ous three levels plus the require­ment to off­set all remain­ing emis­sions for which the air­port is respons­ible in order to achieve car­bon neut­ral operations.

What is the Airport Carbon Emissions Reporting Tool?

Accord­ing to the ACI web­site, the Air­port Car­bon Emis­sions Report­ing Tool (ACERT) is “a self-con­tained Excel spread­sheet that enables an air­port oper­at­or to cal­cu­late its own green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions inventory”

Avail­able “at no cost to air­ports”, the tool “can be used without emis­sions or envir­on­ment­al expert­ise by input­ting read­ily avail­able oper­a­tion­al data”.

Fea­tured image: ACI Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al Angela Git­tens from Air­port World.