Airports across the world have participated in the Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACI) programme, which has seen a reduction of 320 000 collective tonnes or 4.9% of CO2 emissions between May 2018 and 2019.
288 airport hubs have committed to the programme which was launched by the Airports Council International (ACI) Europe in 2009, saw, with 61 airports going completely carbon neutral.
Angela Gittens, ACI World director general, said in a statement yesterday that airports had actively been trying to reduce their carbon emissions since the start of the programme, with a record 49 airports upgrading to a higher level of accreditation this year.
“Airports have been hard at work to deliver tangible CO2 reductions through accreditation. It has been a decade since the launch of the programme and it keeps on growing – both in the number of airports coming on board and in the level of ambition for carbon management,” said Gittens.
She added that the guidelines in the recently developed Offsetting Guidance Document would promote further CO2 emission reductions.
“Additionally, the 50 airports at the highest level of ACI contributed to a further reduction of 710 673 tonnes of CO2 in other sectors through offsets aimed at balancing out their residual emissions.”
The accreditation programme focuses on four pillars for accreditation namely, mapping, reduction, optimisation and neutrality. – Bjorn Vorster
