Delhi Airport achieves ACI's Level 4+ Carbon Accreditation

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Delhi Airport becomes 1st airport in Asia Pacific Region to achieve ACI's Level 4+ Airport Carbon Accreditations

27 November 2020

As teams at Delhi Airport continue to push the boundaries and set new standards of passenger experience, maintaining ecological balance remains the top priorities. Over the years, the airport has adopted many mitigation and adaptation measures to ensure environment safety and sustainability. And, one of the key mitigation measures at the airport is Airport Carbon Accreditation Program of Airport Council International (ACI) which aims to encourage and enable the airports and its stakeholders to implement best practices in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) management and achieve emissions reductions. As part of this program, Delhi Airport has now become Asia Pacific's first Level 4+ (Transition) accredited airport announced by ACI Europe Annual Assembly & Congress.

Delhi Airport has taken various proactive initiatives towards environment management and sustainability. Programs such as renewable energy use (both onsite and offsite), development of green airport Infrastructures, energy conservation & efficiency improvements and stakeholder partnership programs etc. are being implemented. Other energy efficient and environment friendly infrastructures at the airport include electric vehicle charging facility, state of the art Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) & Water Treatment Plant (WTP), energy efficient lighting systems, advanced fuel hydrant systems, Bridge Mounted Equipment (BME) such as Fixed Electric Ground Power Units (FEGP) and Preconditioned Air (PCA) supply systems.

In addition to this, Delhi Airport is also making technological advancement such as adoption of Electric vehicles and Taxibots. Taxibot (a semi-robotic vehicle, is used as a means of taxiing the plane to the runway) at Delhi Airport was adopted in 2019 for commercial operation and is the first airport in the world to take up this initiative. Adoption of Taxibot has resulted in reduction of significant amount of aviation turbine fuel consumption by Aircrafts for ground movement.

Initially the ACI- Airport Carbon Accreditation program had 4 levels- "Level 1: Mapping", "Level 2: Reduction", "Level 3: Optimisation" and "Level 3+ Neutrality". Delhi Airport reached "Level 3+, Neutrality" in 2016, as the first Carbon Neutral Airport in Asia Pacific region. This was the highest level of accreditation at that time and Delhi Airport has maintained "Level 3+, Neutrality" accreditation since then. With addition of Level 4 (Transformation) and Level 4+ (Transition) to the program in 2020, Delhi Airport has yet again justified its capability to justify the highest level of accreditation. The two new levels of the ACI's Airport Carbon Accreditation program have been introduced in line with IPCC's recommendations & ICAO's Aviation Climate Change mitigation objectives. They are also in line with Paris Agreement and to limit the increase of global average temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and aim to not exceed 1.5°C. The Level 4+ (Transition) which Delhi Airport is also part of encourages the airports to reduce their emissions as per the latest scientific developments and meet stakeholder expectations.