Hi and welcome to our new Seriwes of Articles. Maybe we will make an own permanent Category out of it, not sure yet.
Until then let us call it the “Green Box”.
What do we want to do? Well, the whole world is talking about the climate change and can be done to reduce the speed or even stop it. In this category we want to know what actions the aviation world are taking place to make our planet “greener”.
For our first article we have decided to ask one of the biggest german Aaports what they are doing to avoid the climate change. So we asked Munich Airport to tell us about their activities.
Just to make clear what kind of airport we are talking about, here are some facts from 2018:
– 46,3 Million passengers
– 413.000 flights (arrivals and Departures)
– 358.000t of aircargo freight
– 16.800t ofaAirmail
– 106 airlines
– 264 destinations
– in 74 countries
This makes it to one of Germany’s biggest airports and a very important one in Europe.
That means that every action they take is having a big impact. Their goal is to operate CO2-neutral until 2030. With this plan they want to be the first airport in germany to succeed.
But how do they want to reach that goal? The plan is to reduce their own CO2-Emissions by 60%. The other 40% shall be compensated.
Investments of about 150 Million Euros are planned to do that.
To understand what this actions will mean, we first have to ask “what is a CO2 Footprint and which components is calculated of?”
There are three different Scopes:
1. Direct emissions
2. Indirect emissions
3. Indirect emissions of third parties
What belongs to 1. and 2. scope?
– Gasolines
– combined heat- and power plant
– Power (delivered)
– Oil and Gas
What belongs to scope 3?
– Energy for third parties (any Kind)
– Airplane Operations (Landing, Takeoff, APU, Engine Tests, etc.)
– All Traffic (cars, trucks, etc.) coming to and leaving the Airport
This all sounds like boring things in the beginning, but is necessary to understand the impact.
Scope 1 and 2 combined were porducing 101.591t in 2016. And this count shall be “0” in 2030. But what has been done so far?
One big point was the lighting on the airfield. Within 6 years they have changed the whole lighting to LED technology. That meant that they had to create new lightings especially for the need of the airport. All Apron Lights are connected by IoT (=Internet of Things). That means that they report if the lights get too hot, are damaged, can change how much light they are giving, controlled even by sensors that check if passengers planes are passing by.
This alone saves 12.000t of CO2 already. And they are not finished yet. The next ones are the lights within all the parking spaces and at all streets that are connected direclty to the airport.
A second innovation are the new PCA’s (Pre-conditioned Air) installations. These are blowing pre-condfitioned air into the plane while it is standing at the gate. Advantage: The planes can switch off the APU that is normally used for the Air Condition running at the Gate. In sum 64 of these are already installed and in use.
Another big part at an airport is the amount of cars and vehicles needed that normally use gas. In sum 121 Cars that normally use gas or Diesel shall be replaced by electric cars by the end of 2019. That means 20% of the whole carpool.
These are very important projects that are only the beginning. The latest step was the signing of the “Net-Zero Carbon Emissions” by the ACI. All member airports have agreed to reduce the Carbon Emission to “0” by 2050.
Read the Press Announcement of ACI here.
In our opinion that is a good start into the right direction. But there is much more to come.
We will ask many more airports around the world what they are doing to make this world a bit greener. But also we will ask airlines, third parties and many others within the aviation industry what innovations they deliver, what changes they already have set.
So come back next week for another Interesting Report in the “Green Box”.
DV
