ACI-LAC Green Airport Recognition aims to promote environmental best practices to minimize aviation’s impact on the environment and to recognize airport members who have outstanding accomplishments in their environmental projects in one of the following categories: Mitigation and adaptation to Climate Change, and Circular Economy (circularity of products and materials – water, waste, among others).
In Mexico where OMA (of which VINCI Airports has been shareholder since 2022) operated 13 airports, the ACI-LAC has highlighted technologies that generate energy savings and, in turn, reduce carbon emissions including:
- Energy consumption monitoring: to control refrigeration, lighting and energy production systems
- Battery bank: an innovative plant technology project that operates integrally with photovoltaic cells storing energy.
Both projects optimize the use of energy generated by photovoltaic cell farms at each airport.
Since the implementation of these actions from 2018 to the end of 2022, a reduction of over 8,000 tons of tCO2 has been achieved, equivalent to planting more than 261,000 trees and saving more than 18 million kWh.
In Costa Rica, where VINCI Airports operates Guanacaste airport, the awarded project is Building accessibility with lids. It’s an environmental and social initiative to build accessible walkways using recycled plastic lids. First a campaign has been promoted at different points of the airport terminal to collect plastic caps. Then, accessible walkways made of recycled plastic have been installed on the National Wildlife Refuge of Guanacaste, including Junquillal and Ostional beaches, which become the first accessible beach in the province of Guanacaste. The project involves key partnerships with entities such as ProParques, SINAC, and other local companies.
Other examples in Dominican Republic, at Las Americas airport (Santo Domingo) where our teams have recently optimize the air conditioning system.
In Chile, it’s about the sustainable boiler upgrade implemented at Santiago international airport.
Energy efficiency initiatives have also been awarded by the ACI-LAC in Brazil at Salvador Bahia airport (nominated by ANAC in 2022 the most sustainable airport of the country, that has already achieved an 87% reduction in carbon emissions (scopes 1 and 2) in 2022) in addition to sustainable waste collectors in Amazonia airports.
VINCI Airports is committed to sustainability and has set ambitious goals. This includes a commitment to achieve net zero emissions (scope 1&2) for its airports operated in the European Union by 2030, extending to all its airports by 2050. In addition, we have pledged to eliminate waste sent to landfill by 2030 and to reduce water consumption per passenger by 50% by 2030.
Our results are already here with a 44% reduction in direct carbon emissions between 2018 and 2022 over our network composed of +70 airports worldwide. In addition, 25 among those airports have obtained ISO 14001 certification. We have also a solar power capacity of 44 MWp at our airports. And at least but not last, we have reached a recovery rate of 74% of all waste, with 49% recycled.