The International Air Transport Association (IATA) and project management firm Adkins have created a suite of digital tools for airports to estimate the carbon associated with buildings and aviation assets.
“Decarbonizing aviation is the industry’s greatest challenge, and the industry is fully committed and making progress,” IATA Operations Safety and Security Senior Vice President Nick Careen said. “However, reaching net zero by 2050 will require collective efforts from the entire industry supply chain and from policymakers.”
Careen said the collaboration with Atkins would help airports meet their own objectives by providing a crucial platform to evaluate and reduce carbon impacts for new airport developments.
The tools will deliver embodied carbon benchmarking for the three key airport asset types of terminal buildings, runways and multi-story car parks – enabling airport development teams to understand the carbon footprint of development work and enter into dialogue with airport operators about how to mitigate it.
“Our embodied carbon advisory team have worked with IATA to develop a set of innovative industry tools, leading a mature aviation market into a challenging and previously unexplored area of embodied carbon assessment,” Atkins Aviation Infrastructure Technical Director Andy Yates said. “These tools allow clients to confidently explore the vital conversations around embodied carbon reduction as airports respond to the complex challenges that surround the sector’s net zero goals.”
The tools have been developed by a team that includes architecture, airport planning and structural design personnel, as well as carbon experts, ensuring a solution that understands the complexity and multi-faceted approach needed to assess embodied carbon, Yates noted.