Airports and Climate Preservation

As a result of both increasing air traffic (at least until 2008) and growing awareness of  the rising energy use and emissions throughout the aeronautical industry, environmental issues and climate protection are gaining attention from a  research perspective. The research effort AIRCLIP collected, analyzed and documented best practices associated with about 200 environmental measures for the reduction of CO₂ emissions at and around 60 international airports. Those environmental measures have been evaluated and possible implementations for the Austrian airports have been examined in order to develop strategies and procedure recommendations for the future.

The study also included already implemented or planned environmental measures for the reduction of CO₂ emissions at and around the Austrian airports for the benefit of international experts. AIRCLIP documented figures, calculations, links and contact data related to the catalogued best practices. The best practise database and the whole research study are structured according to the following five topics:

• Airfield operations
• Transport and Mobility
• Energy efficiency
• Renewable energy
• Administrative

The most successful international airports in terms of the realization of environmental measures for the reduction of CO₂ emissions include: Stockholm-Arlanda, Zurich, Geneva, Hamburg, Munich, Copenhagen, London-Heathrow as well as Portland, Seattle, Auckland und Sydney. In addition, the implemented environmental measures at and around Austrian airports such as Vienna International, Salzburg or Innsbruck Airport are noteworthy best practices offering quite good benchmarks on the reduction of CO₂ emissions.

The research study AIRCLIP was carried out by CEIT ALANOVA – Central European Institute of Technology, Institute for Urbanism, Transport, Environment and Information Society. It was funded within TAKE OFF – The Austrian Aeronautics Research and Technology Programme/4^th call for tenders. The programme owner of TAKE OFF is the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology/Department of Mobility and Transport Technology (Programme management of TAKE OFF: The Austrian Research Promotion Agency). The final report of the research study is available in English: http://www.bmvit.gv.at/innovation/luftfahrt/studien/index.html