Copenhagen Airport launches CO2 neutral growth goal

Copenhagen Airport has a goal of CO2-neutral growth to 30 million passengers – and the ambition to maintain that goal while expanding to 40 million passengers.

“As an airport, we have a responsibility to the community we are part of, so we have set ourselves the goal that our growth up to 30 million passengers must be CO2-neutral. And it is our ambition to stick with that goal up to 40 million passengers. One of the objectives of making such a very long-term plan is also to be able to lay a basic plan for sustainability and energy efficiency,” explained Copenhagen Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye.

In January of this year, CPH announced its vision for the expansion of Copenhagen Airport: a plan for how the airport intends to increase capacity over the next few decades to handle up to 40 million passengers annually – almost twice the number the airport handles today. The expansion plans are closely related to the objective of responsible growth discussed in the CSR report for 2013 recently released by Copenhagen Airports A/S.

“Our CSR strategy is part of our business strategy, and it’s intended to ensure that we grow in a responsible way. As one of northern Europe’s key transport hubs, we have a responsibility to improve the region’s international accessibility and thereby create growth opportunities and jobs in the region as a whole. But we also have a responsibility to ensure that this growth happens in a responsible way in terms of the environment, society and our financial performance,” said Woldbye.

Responsible growth requires collaboration

A total of 700 companies operate at Copenhagen Airport, and CPH’s options in growing the airport in a responsible manner require a strong collaboration with those companies. For this reason, part of CPH’s strategy is to reduce the use of resources by these partners, both to reduce their total cost of operating at the airport and to benefit the environment.

As a second step in this collaboration, CPH calculated aggregate CO2 emissions from all operations at the airport in 2013, both those CPH is directly responsible for and those of the other companies at the airport. This revealed the various sources of CO2 emissions and forms a good basis for CPH’s continuing efforts to reduce emissions.

CO2 emissions totalled 306,482 tonnes in 2013, which was a year-on-year reduction of 1,500 tonnes. Overall, each passenger occasioned 12.7 kilos of CO2 emissions in 2013, of which CPH was directly responsible for 1.3 kilos.

The report can be downloaded here: http://www.cph.dk/en/about-cph/csr/our-responsibility/