Design of a carbon neutral airport

Abstract

Historic data shows an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at airports caused by an increase in aircraft flights, associated ground support equipment, flight operations, and passenger movements. Despite rising concerns over the potential effects of anthropogenic activities on earth's climate, there is no singular ownership of the problem and therefore no commitment to fund change. There exists a need for a system to ensure compliance and accountability to enable preparation for future legislation for emission regulations at airports through reduction of CO2 for all components of flight operations. The purpose of this project is to provide the airport manager at major airports, such as Dulles International Airport, a tradeoff analysis for strategies to achieve carbon neutral growth at airports by 2020 with a 2005 baseline and net reductions of all aviation emissions by 2050. A decision support tool, the Airport Inventory Tool (AIT), was developed to create an emissions inventory to model airport operations from 2005 and create projections to 2050 using a 2% and 4% growth rate for airport operations to evaluate mitigation strategies. Ground support equipment and aircraft were the two largest sources of emissions. The combination of all design alternatives provides reduction of CO2 emission levels such that the CO2 emissions for 2050 meet the goal of carbon neutral for a 2% growth rate but do not achieve carbon neutrality with a 4% growth rate.