Delhi Airport becomes first in Asia-Pacific to achieve carbon neutral status

Delhi Airport, managed by Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), a GMR Group led consortium, on Tuesday announced that it has become the first airport in Asia-Pacific to achieve the Carbon Neutral status. The announcement has been made by Airports Council International (ACI) during the Airport Carbon Accreditation certificate presentation ceremony in Montreal in Canada, where CEO of DIAL I Prabhakara Rao received the certificate. The same body awarded Delhi Airport the world’s number one position (in 25-40 million passengers per annum category) twice in a row under the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) programme.

On the occasion, Prabhakara Rao said: “Achievement of the accreditation for carbon neutrality is indeed recognition of a great team work. Today we have delivered on our commitment of achieving sustainable solutions for Aviation Climate Change mitigations made at LPAA-COP 21 last year through carbon neutrality. With this achievement, we have set up new benchmark for other airports in this region to follow. Going forward, we are focussing on energy conservation and exploring alternative solution for generating green energy. Delhi Airport aims to increase its solar power generation capacity to 20 MW by 2020.”

At IGIA, DIAL has taken the proactive approach towards environment management and sustainability development. Terminal 3 of Delhi Airport is a LEED Gold certified green building. The energy efficiency measures implemented in IGIA has been registered in UNFCCC as Clean Development Mechanism project. DIAL has also set up 7.84 MW solar power plants to reduce GHG emission. 

Other energy efficient and environment friendly infrastructures at the airport include state of the art Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) and Water treatment plant (WTP), energy efficient Bridge Mounted Equipment (BMEs), energy efficient lighting systems, advanced fuel hydrant systems, Fixed Electric Ground Power Units (FEGP) and Preconditioned Air (PCA) supply systems. The various emission saving measures implemented in DIAL have resulted in 51% reduction in specific GHG emission (kgCO2/Pax) during the last five years.