The ACA (Airport Carbon Accreditation) program developed by ACI Europe (the European branch of Airports Council International) continues to intensify. VINCI Airports has just announced that the 10 Portuguese airports the airport operator has in its portfolio have reached Level 4+ (Transfer), one of the highest levels of carbon removal in the programme, which recently became Level 5, followed only by Level 6 (Transition). Portugal is the first European country to see all of its airports achieve this level of carbon removal.
Portuguese airports have reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by 35% since 2018
The 10 airports involved are Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport, Porto Airport, Faro Airport, Funchal Airport (Madeira), Ponta Delgada Airport (Madeira), Horta Airport (Azores), Porto Santo Airport (Madeira), Santa Maria Airport (Azores) , Flores Airport (Azores) and Beja Airport. The Transformation Certificate acknowledges that airports have fully accounted for and reported direct and indirect CO2 emissions related to airport activities and operations, have significantly reduced their direct emissions, offset their remaining direct emissions and have begun to reduce indirect emissions. Finally, understand that airports have set carbon emission reduction targets compatible with the less than 2°C warming scenario of the Paris Agreement. The fact that the 10 Portuguese airports have been able to obtain this certification is based on the deployment of decarbonization by VINCI Airports, which has already enabled it to reduce its direct emissions by 35% since 2018. The photovoltaic production program for VINCI airports is therefore in progress to be deployed in all airports Portuguese, with the first unit delivered to Faro Airport in 2022. The Forest Carbon Pit programme, which aims to sequester residual emissions (Scopes 1 and 2), has been deployed near Faro, Porto and Lisbon airports.
