BIRMINGHAM AIRPORT PUBLISHES SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

Birmingham Airport Publishes Sustainability Strategy

Birmingham Airport has published its Sustainability Strategy outlining recent achievements and future aims to ensure it remains a responsible neighbour and reduces its environmental impact.

The Strategy has been developed around the theme of Commitment, Investment and Progress and outlines the airport’s vision to maximise the economic and social benefits it brings to its region and minimise its impact on its neighbours and the global environment.

The main headline in the publication is the airport’s commitment to become a net zero carbon airport by the year 2033, prioritising zero carbon airport operations and minimising carbon offsets. Recognising that climate change is happening, the airport feels it needs to set an ambitious target ahead of the UK’s target, to reduce its carbon footprint further and quicker.

In addition to climate change mitigation, the strategy focuses on its priorities to reduce its other environmental impacts and make improvements in areas, such as local air quality, waste, supply chain and the circular economy, water and biodiversity.

To ensure it continues to be a responsible neighbour, its priorities include noise, quality of life of local communities and economic development & employment.

Nick Barton, Birmingham Airport’s CEO, said:

“Our Sustainability Strategy sets out a robust commitment towards a sustainable future for the airport over the next five years, and we have adopted the principle of ‘think global, act local’.

“Although we have acted as a responsible business in the past, we cannot become complacent. We don’t have all the answers now and know we can always do more. This is why we’ve developed this strategy to address changes in our day-to-day activity and in the longer term.

“However, we will not work in isolation, as the key to achieving our goals is by working in partnership with local residents, tenants, employees, small businesses, technology companies, industry and government.”

The strategy aligns with two important sustainability policy documents; the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the newly-published Airports Council International Europe Sustainability Strategy for Airports.

Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI EUROPE: “With the launch today of its comprehensive Sustainability Strategy, Birmingham Airport is positioned amongst the leaders that are charting the next stage of the airport industry’s business transformation: moving from being B2B & B2C to also becoming B2P(eople). This is about putting the societal purpose of airports at the heart of their business strategy.

“Our ACI EUROPE ‘Sustainability Strategy for Airports’ published last June provides the airport community with the tool & guidance to move forward, and I am happy to see that Birmingham Airport has made very good use of it. I also congratulate the airport for formally committing to Net Zero carbon emissions - in line with our ACI EUROPE commitment to have all of Europe’s airports achieving that goal by 2050 at the latest.”

Although the strategy covers a five-year period, some of the targets set will be delivered over a longer period. The airport nevertheless strives to achieve these as soon as practicable and commits to review the strategy on an annual basis.

Over the next six to twelve months Birmingham Airport will be working to revise its existing carbon management plan and develop a roadmap. This will set and prioritise genuine carbon reduction objectives rather than carbon off-setting schemes, which it sees as the least favourable option.

Technology is changing at some pace and the movement to a net-zero economy itself is driving innovation across the energy and transportation industry, and the airport will take advantage of this.

The Birmingham Airport Sustainability Strategy features the company’s newly-developed Corporate Purpose, ‘Proud of every journey’, which is supported by six core business imperatives – Growth, Customer, People, Efficiency, Safety & Security and Neighbour.  

Birmingham Airport’s Sustainability Strategy 2020-2025 can be downloaded here