Reduce aviation’s greenhouse gas emissions through immediately feasible and affordable gate electrification

Abstract

Aircraft at airport gates require power and air conditioning, provided by fossil fuel-combusting equipment, to maintain functionality and thermal comfort. We estimate the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and economic implications from electrifying gate operations for 2354 commercial-traffic airports in the world. Here we show that complete electrification could yield GHG reductions of 63%–97% per gate operation relative to current practice, with greater reductions correlated with low-carbon electricity. Economic payback periods average just 1–2 years. Shifting to complete gate electrification could save a high-traffic airport an average of $5–6 million in annual climate economic damages relative to estimates of current practice. 10–12 million metric tons of annual GHG emissions are potentially saved if most airports in the world electrified gate operations, costing the 24 busiest global airports on average $25–30, U.S. airports $60–70, and non-U.S. airports $80–90 per metric ton of CO2 mitigated, in some cases comparable to carbon-market prices. Environmental benefits depend primarily upon electricity sources and operational parameters such as aircraft fleet composition.

Airport sustainability through life cycle assessments: A systematic literature review

“…Gate electrification will also improve air quality on the airport apron and reduce exposure to particulate pollution as well. This represents a human health benefit for the passengers, airport employees, and the general community living within proximity to the airport (Greer et al, 2021). VOCs compared to GSE (Mokalled et al, 2018).…”

“…While investigating the same, it was seen that there are very few papers investigating this problem and most papers in aviation emission concentrates on the aircraft flying operations, essentially neglecting the contributions of the airport and ground‐based operations. In fact, the findings/results showed that out of the 11 reviewed papers, only four applied LCA methods in their analysis of environmental impacts, of which none involved LCA of APU and GSE operations in airport during aircraft turnaround time (Altuntas et al, 2014; Greer et al, 2021; Greer et al, 2023; Zampaglione de Miguel, 2017).…”

“…Another study focused only on the LCA of airport terminal buildings to analyze the mitigation strategies and address the pollutants that affect climate change and human health (Greer et al, 2023). Similar research centered on the LCA of GHG emissions and economic implications of electrifying gate operations (Greer et al, 2021). The life cycle approach was used in estimating GHG emissions during the turnaround operations when APU is used to provide electrical power and heating/cooling for parked aircrafts, that is, there was no inclusion of GSE in their analysis.…”

“…Environmental impacts from airport operation and maintenance activities (e.g., building upgrades, lighting of terminals and runways, servicing parked aircrafts, Auxiliary Power Unit [APU] and Ground Service Equipment [GSE]) operations during aircraft turnaround time are significant and should be considered. A comprehensive environmental accounting of the aviation industry should consider GHG emissions from these activities to explore options to effectively mitigate their climate change contribution (Greer et al, 2021). Airport activities are estimated to constitute 5% of the aviation sector's total GHG emissions (ACA, 2022).…”

Life-Cycle Approach to Healthy Airport Terminal Buildings: Spatial-Temporal Analysis of Mitigation Strategies for Addressing the Pollutants that Affect Climate Change and Human Health

“…A more complete approach for estimating emissions would be to use a bill of materials and construction schedule from a terminal project. Effects of airport efficiency improvements on buildings (e.g., from gate electrification) would also require additional work on the tool framework ( 56 ).…”