Making airports more sustainable

At BAA, as well as exploring ways to reduce or mitigate aviation's climate change impact as a whole, we are working hard to reduce the impacts that we do have direct control over: those of our terminal buildings and infrastructure.

BAA’s aim by 2010 is to reduce absolute CO2 emissions across our group of airports to 15% less than 1990 levels. By 2020 we aim to reduce them to 30% less than 1990 levels. We are working towards this by:

• Ensuring energy efficiency is built into the design of new facilities;
• Investing in energy-efficient technology;
• Using information systems and tools to improve our data on energy use;
• Encouraging behaviour change to save energy; and
• Sourcing more renewable energy and installing low or zero carbon on-site power generation.

Stansted’s renewable energy drive
As part of our renewable energy drive, at Stansted we have installed a biomass boiler that will reduce CO2 emissions from our new terminal extension. The boiler burns woodchip fuel from a renewable, Forest Stewardship Council approved, source in the UK. This takes over as the lead boiler for the terminal and is predicted to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from the terminal's operation.

Renewable energy and reducing energy use will also be at the heart of a second terminal at Stansted, featuring:

• New buildings and infrastructure designed to use less energy;
• Renewable energy sourced through a central Ground Coupled Chiller Heat-Pump system using energy piles as a source of heat in winter and cooling in summer, reducing the energy used for heating and cooling compared to conventional boilers and chillers; and
• An energy from waste plant in which electricity is generated from the processing of waste from the second runway airport development.

Less CO2 per passenger at Stansted
We have continued to drive down the amount of CO2 generated per passenger using our terminal buildings. Since 2002 this figure has reduced from 2.94kg per passenger to 1.66kg  per passenger in 2007.

Our planned second terminal, which will use ground-breaking renewable energy technologies throughout, will generate less CO2 per passenger in 2030 than our current operation in 2007. Despite passenger numbers expected to be around the 68m a year mark in 2030 (compared to around 23 million today) CO2 generated per passenger using our terminal operation is expected to fall to 1.14kg  per passenger.