1.3.2010
Environmental report: Focus on climate generates results

In its Environmental Report 2009, published today, CPH looks back at a year marked by the international climate summit. Copenhagen Airport continues to work to improve its environmental performance.

Climate was a key topic for CPH in 2009.  In two weeks in December, 132 heads of state and several thousand delegates landed at Copenhagen Airport to attend the international climate conference.

The launch of its CO2OL Travel campaign also gave CPH the opportunity to tell the world what the airport is doing to reduce its energy consumption and thus its CO2 emissions. CPH has been working intensively to reduce its energy consumption in recent years: these efforts included a new groundwater cooling plant which will be able to significantly reduce its use of power in the terminals over the next four years. CPH is also working on reducing its power consumption by increasing its use of LED lighting and daylight lighting control, which has cut power use by 400,000 kWh on an annual basis. These are some of the many activities aimed at ensuring that CPH will reach its target of reducing power consumption by 10% by 2012 relative to 2007 and CO2 emissions by 21% by 2012 relative to 1990.

Better environmental performance through collaboration
Work to identify and implement lower energy consumption continued as an important element of CPH’s constant effort to improve the company’s environmental performance. In addition to cutting CO2 emissions from airport operations, CPH is working together with other operators at the airport to reduce the airport’s impact on the climate.

“In 2009, we conducted a survey together with air traffic control services Naviair and Eurocontrol to study how traffic operations at Copenhagen airport can help make climate gains,” said Erik Nielsen, environmental manager at CPH. “The survey showed that an annual fuel reduction of 10,000 tonnes and thus savings of 32,000 tonnes or more of CO2 emissions had been achieved at Copenhagen Airport through so-called ‘green take-offs’, in which the aircraft climb continuously to their optimal operating altitude and then turn into the planned route, which provides savings over the normal procedure,” he said.

Follow air quality at Copenhagen Airport on NERI’s website
In 2009, CPH began running a new system for monitoring air quality by the airport perimeter. The monitoring is carried out by the Danish National Environmental Research Institute (NERI), which now publishes the monitoring results from the airport on its website, together with other results from the national monitoring programme.  NERI also set up a measuring station on the apron in collaboration with CPH in 2009, and the results from that station will be used to help track air quality from a working environment point of view.