London Stansted has published a new Sustainability Report, which details achievements made by the airport within its five-year-journey to reduce overall emissions and transition to net zero.
The airport’s strategy, dubbed ‘working together for a brighter future’, has focused on continued efforts to reduce its carbon emissions, create more jobs and provide an impact on communities surrounding the site.
Achievements touted by the airport over the last five years include the establishment of a target of transition to net zero carbon operations (scope one and two) by 2038; the launch of a Jet Zero curriculum to teach young people about Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) at its Aerozone facility; the securing of planning permission and associated ground-breaking for a new 14.3MW on-site solar farm; the generation of 7.6 million GBP of new business for local small and medium sized companies at its Meet the Buyers events and the donation of over 665,000 GBP to local organisations.
‘Working together for a brighter future’ is a strategy adopted across the MAG group of airports, which consists of London Stansted, Manchester Airport and East Midlands Airport. The strategy employs three pillars: Opportunity for all; Local voices and Zero carbon airports.
The final year of the strategy has seen the rollout of high-speed electric vehicles across Stansted airport, as well as the welcoming of the 25,000th visitor to the Aerozone since its initial opening in 2015.
Building on the success of ‘Working together for a brighter future’; Stansted launched its new five-year Sustainability Strategy: ‘Creating a sustainable future for all’ earlier this year, which aims to continue making progress on key targets and work toward net zero carbon operations by 2038.
Gareth Powell, London Stansted’s Managing Director, said:The past five years have seen the airport make excellent progress delivering a host of projects and initiatives against our three strategic priorities: Zero Carbon Airport, Opportunity for All and Local Voices. I’m very proud of our achievements, particularly in light of the unprecedented challenges we faced because of the pandemic.
These positive developments include securing planning permission for our 14.3MW on-site solar farm, which in now well underway and when complete in spring next year will be the first of its kind at a London airport. Alongside this, our education and employment programmes supported more than 40,800 people, and we donated more than £665,000 to local causes through our Community Fund.
During the final year of our Strategy, our hard work continued to deliver successful sustainability initiatives, including the installation of 10 new high-speed Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers for EV owners using the airport.
We were also pleased to welcome the 25,000th visitor to our on-site Aerozone education facility since it opened in 2015 – demonstrating the scale of our positive impact on young people in our region.
We want to grow the airport in the most sustainable and responsible way possible and have applied to increase our passenger limit to 51m per year on our existing runway without operating any additional flights beyond those already approved. We recognise to achieve this goal our ambitious approach to sustainability must continue, so earlier this year we launched our new Sustainability Strategy: Creating a sustainable future for all.
The new Strategy builds on a more than two decades long commitment to sustainability as our industry moves towards its net zero targets. It reaffirms our commitment to providing opportunities for education and employment, as well as ensuring the voices of those who live closest to our airports are heard, understood and valued.
I would like to thank everyone at Stansted Airport for their continued hard work and commitment to deliver our sustainability programme and look forward to celebrating future achievements together.
The full report is available for viewing here.
