Green is the colour for Stuttgart Airport

Over the last few years, Germany’s Stuttgart Airport has worked hard to minimise its environmental footprint, and it is keen to do more, as airport CEO Walter Schoefer explains

In 2017, Stuttgart Airport set itself new climate goals. Presumably they represent an even sterner test of your green ambitions?
We have assigned ourselves an extremely demanding task: we are striving to run the airport entirely carbon neutral by 2050. Our first milestone is in 2030. By then we want to have halved our greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990. Climate protection has been on our agenda for many years now. We want to do our part in worldwide efforts against climate change.

So far we have managed to reduce 26% of our emissions through efficiency and emissions reduction projects. We will continue to do so by expanding our electric GSE fleet, producing more electricity from alternative sources ourselves and by installing large energy storage facilities. Beyond that, we can still save energy by investing in new buildings and refurbishments.

What progress have you made so far on electric GSE?
Making ground handling more efficient and sustainable is a part of our core business. In only a few weeks we will have reached one of our interim targets: by the end of spring we will be running an all-electric fleet of passenger buses and baggage tugs on the ramp. This will save about 280,000 litres of diesel fuel a year; that is about 700 tons of CO2 from handling operations. Our GSE fleets are one of the major levers on our way to climate neutrality.

We provide infrastructure for alternative vehicles not only airside but also landside. Since the beginning of this year we have launched 33 new charging points for our passengers’ and visitors’ electric cars. We have installed the latest charging technology. The most recent generation of electric cars can fill up their batteries during a short stop at our fast charging stations.

Have you built on the work you achieved in the pre-2014 period, when you initiated a test programme for certain electric GSE and vehicles?
In 2013, we launched efleet, a showcase for e-mobility at Stuttgart Airport, in close co-operation with GSE producers and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The aim was to gain experience with this technology and to collect technical, environmental and financial data that would help us make informed decisions on future electrification on the ramp.

We started off with a wide variety of electric GSE including passenger buses, baggage and cargo tugs, a belt loader and a pushback vehicle. Some of them were only available as prototypes at that time, but were brought to market maturity in the course of the test run.

During the pilot phase, our battery-powered fleet towed about 12,000 aircraft, transported more than 300,000 passengers and moved 1.5 million pieces of luggage. The daily routine and data analysis showed that airports are particularly suited for an application of electric equipment, thanks to the short distances and shift work involved. The efleet project served as a cornerstone for the large-scale expansion of emission-free ground handling that we are working on right now. In the current project scale-up, we are expanding our electric fleet by another 40 ground handling vehicles in the period up to 2019.

credit: Stuttgart Airport

How does your green strategy pertain to airside buildings and other infrastructure? How does it relate to noise mitigation?
We know that the replacement of buildings and refurbishments can have an immensely positive effect on environmental performance. We will tackle and renew our Terminal 4 next. The new terminal will be able to produce its own energy and fulfil the highest possible efficiency standards. This will be an essential step towards reaching our climate goals.

In line with our fairport STR concept – the leading idea behind all our decisions – we integrate ecological and socio-cultural aspects besides technical and economic factors in every construction project within the airport city. We are a member of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB eV) and pre-certify according to their sustainability criteria.

Have you collaborated directly with your handler (Losch) at Stuttgart to minimise their environmental footprint wherever possible?
As an airport operator we assume responsibility not only for our own environmental footprint but also for the impact of the airport as a whole. Accordingly, we set incentives and collaborate with other players on the campus.

For example, the second ground handling service provider in Stuttgart (other than our own), Losch Airport Service, is collaborating with us in the scale-up programme for our electric fleet. We have installed battery-charging stations for them. We believe that if we work together, we can create a healthier working environment for our employees who work on the apron, like ramp agents or loaders.

Have your green proposals been widely welcomed by your own staff as well as by other airport operators and visitors?
Stuttgart Airport takes a pioneering role by investing in new, environmentally friendly technologies. Airports exchange their best practices – we are all learning from each other. We like to think of airports as innovation platforms, where requirements for future developments can be gathered and where prototypes can be tested. In Stuttgart that has particularly been the case for electric vehicles, and currently is the case for smart grids as an aspect of the transition towards renewable energies.

credit: Stuttgart Airport

What has driven your thinking to minimise your environmental footprint? Is it public pressure, a desire to do the right thing, regulatory pressures, or a combination of those things and more?
Environmental protection and social responsibility are not new ideas to us. Our first – what you would now call CSR [corporate social responsibility] – activities date back to the 1960s and 70s, when we implemented a noise monitoring system and a noise-dependent fee structure.

Since then, we have worked on energy efficiency, water protection, resource management, employee development, compliance management and more. There were certainly intrinsic motivations, because saving energy – for instance – also saves money. Business success and sustainability performance are inseparably connected to us.

In 2013, we finally bundled all our activities in our fairport STR strategy. We have set an ambitious goal for ourselves: in the long run we want to become one of the highest-performing and most sustainable airports in Europe. In everything we do we want to create an added value for our employees and the environment as well as for the economy and people of our region.

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