Christchurch Airport’s reached a new milestone – they’re officially climate positive; which is even better than carbon neutral.
The team at Christchurch airport has taken a science-based approach to reducing their environmental footprint since they started independently auditing our greenhouse gas emissions in 2006.
Since then, the airport has cut their onsite operational (Scope 1) emissions by 90 per cent.
A chunk of that was achieved when the airport ditched diesel and started using the latent heat in aquifer water to heat and cool the terminal, with every drop returned to the aquifer unharmed.
More emissions were cut when the airport migrated our corporate vehicle fleet to EVs, swapped their lights to LEDs and adopted a smart system to manage their buildings.
The remaining 10 per cent is made up of things like refrigerant emissions, fire extinguishers and a back-up diesel generator.
At the moment there are no suitable green alternatives to these. The team says they’ll keep looking but in the meantime they’ve invested in carbon credits that will see a native forest in New Zealand permanently regenerated.
That removes the airport’s remaining carbon emissions – plus an extra 25 per cent, making us climate positive.
And they’re not done yet. The team says their goal is to do things that enable others to decarbonise at the fastest possible rate.
That’s why they’re developing K≈çwhai Park. In time, the airport will have green energy being generated right beside their runways…conveniently located for airlines and other businesses to use.
