Carbon Management in Airports – The Highlights of My Master’s Thesis

Most of you probably know that the inspiration to start this blog back in the summer of 2014 came directly from the variety of airport-related topics I came across while planning and executing the study for my master’s thesis. Only recently I finished my program of study at the University of British Columbia, and I decided to share a few interesting facts with you before the holiday season starts in many different parts of the world. This way, you will have something to think about if you go through airports and travel by air during this festive season. In addition, the finalization of the Paris Agreement this month brought some positive results environmentally speaking (even though the issue of aviation specifically will be dealt separately), and I want to connect it to my personal study.

The goal of my study was to understand the different ways airports monitor, manage, and report their carbon emissions, including the constraints they can face, and successful elements of collaborative carbon management currently used by airport authorities. It’s important to remember that airports started getting guidance about ways to monitor and manage carbon emissions in 2009-2010, by both ACRP and ACI-World, and it was really interesting to study what has been done in this relatively short period of 5-6 years. Even though a future of of CO2-neutral airports (including carbon-neutral airplanes) is still far, I had to begin somewhere.

How far is this future?

Fact 1  – Perceived environmental management priorities
Aircraft noise and Local Air Quality (LAQ) are still the highest priorities for airports in regards to environmental management, for both current and planned policies. It makes sense, since nearby communities are exposed to those two adverse impacts and react immediately, unlike GHG emissions that affect globally and cause less immediate reaction. Carbon management is ranked as a higher priority in future policies, probably because of the growing awareness this issue gets, especially in the recent days, given the Climate Summit in Paris.

Fact 2 – Constraints on carbon management in airports
The lack of government regulation that requires airports to collaborate with tenants on the issue of carbon management is perceived as the biggest constraint on collaborative carbon management with tenants in regards to current policies. However, in future policies, the cost of implementation of technical solutions is perceived as a bigger constraint. In addition, reaching consensus with tenants over the implementation of several types of solution was mentioned as a constraint only regarding future policies.

Fact 3 – The need to develop new GHG reporting standards for the airport industry
It is necessary to develop unified GHG reporting standards for airports that better reflect the technological interdependence between airports and aircrafts, attributing some of the responsibility of GHG emissions generated by landing and take-off (LTO) cycles to airports. Nowadays, airports treat aircraft emissions as “indirect emissions” even though aeronautical revenues still account for the majority of the revenue sources of airports. A better approach for airports’ GHG reporting would be equivalent to the model used by cities that go by geographic boundaries, rather than emission sources ownership.

Fact 4  – Lack of access to tenants’ data
66% of the respondents reported a difficulty to some degree in getting access to tenants’ emissions data. Among the incentives for tenants to share data with airport authorities several options were mentioned: financial incentives, government regulation, requirements in the lease agreement, data confidentiality, and a more streamlined internal GHG reporting process.

If you’re curious to know more, I invite you to take a look at my actual thesis (published at the UBC website) and learn more about the study.
I’d love to hear your feedback.

Happy Holidays to all my readers!

 

Airports, who are you guys?

Commercial aviation has progressed significantly since the first flight by Orville Wright that took place on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It’s hard to imagine travelling over long distances domestically and internationally without using airplanes that need to be operated from airports and airfields, especially with the time constraints that the modern life style imposes on us.

To be able to understand how many people use the services of airports daily, let’s go back a few years to the year of 2009, a year after an economic recession that threatened to thoroughly change the global economy. In 2009 alone, airlines carried about 2.9 billion people and 38 million tonnes of freight on scheduled services worldwide. In addition, Passenger traffic is expected to grow at an average rate of 4.8% per year through the year 2036, and most of that growth will occur in developing countries such as India and China [1]. The growing demand for the services of air- carriers clearly has economic benefits on airports that are used by those air-carriers. In the US alone, 490 commercial airports supported 10.5 million jobs, and created revenues of $365 billion in the year of 2012 [2]. The top-ten busiest airports in the world face volumes of traffic between 60-90 million passengers a year [3].

Besides the positive economic impacts, airports and air travel have negative influence on its surroundings too, such as noise pollution and GHG emissions, known as “negative externalities” by economists [4]. These impacts’ mitigation is slowly integrated into many airports’ operations and management strategies. Some airports started involving local communities (stakeholders) creating a participatory planning process that is supposed to take the interest of most stakeholders into account. Representatives that serve in those committees can be residents from neighboring communities living next to an airport, professionals from the business sector, and officials from city municipalities nearby. Those committees enable airport authorities to get feedback from the communities where they are located. YVR Airport in Vancouver is a good example [5].

In this blog I will try to go in depth as much as I can about many different aspects of airport management and operations. The next post will present an airside arena analysis

In the meantime, just to get the impression of how complex to manage airports are, let’s go back to the year of 1964, and watch what Heathrow airport in London looked like back then:

References:

1. ICAO. (2010). Aviation Outlook – ICAO Environmental Report.
2. Airport Council International – North America. (2012). The Economic Impact of Commercial Airports in 2010.
3. Airport Council International – Statistics for 2013.
4. Gossling, S., & Upham, P. (2009). Climate Change and Aviation. London: Earthscan.
5. YVR Airport Environmental Management – http://www.yvr.ca/en/community-environment/environmental-management/accountability-community.aspx