Why Aviation Ministry's Green Take-Off Plan Is A Great Idea  

Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju recently said at a meeting with officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI): “Not only should our airports be self-sufficient in energy and water requirements, but look at feeding power to the national grid as we have sufficient open spaces available”. He also directed the AAI to develop an airport-wise action plan on both energy and water conservation within a month.

The task of “feeding power to national grids” that the minister set for AAI is certainly a difficult one. But when it is implemented, it will change the way airports function in India.

The current situation

According to the AAI, there are 464 airports/airstrips in the country, and their combined energy and water consumption is humongous. The AAI owns and manages 125 airports and 26 civil enclaves at defence airfields. The authority is trying to cut down the energy consumption at the airports, including by installing solar power plants at 16 airports, with a combined capacity of 5.4 Mw. This has led to a reduction of 4,600 metric tonnes of carbon emissions at these airports.

As far as water consumption is concerned, the AAI is already using re-cycled water for horticulture, fire-fighting and air-conditioning requirements at many of its airports.

The plan

While the AAI plans to make operational 24.1 Mw of solar power plants by December 2016 at 11 other airports, it has set an ambitious target of 116 Mw solar power generation. 

By putting in place green energy practices, the authority will not only be able to further curtail power and water consumption at the existing airports, but it would also set a precedent for the upcoming ones. With the coming on stream of new airports, a huge number of fliers will be catered to, but managing an increased air passenger traffic without consuming all the energy our grids have got will be a tremendous challenge.

The story so far

As the finance minister of India, Manmohan Singh had spearheaded the much-needed liberalisation in the early 1990s. By the time Singh took charge as the country's prime minister for a second term in 2009, India was already on a path to becoming an industrial force to reckon with. The economic prosperity in the country had percolated to every segment and changed many things in people's lives in India, including how they travelled.

By this time, Indians had taken to the skies, literally. Mindful of the fact that this phenomenon would spread to the remote areas of the country, the Manmohan Singh government in March 2014 initiated a policy on regional and remote area air connectivity with an aim to develop 100 new airports in smaller cities.

The new Narendra Modi-led dispensation that took charge in May of that year was only too keen to give wings to its predecessor's plan. But with better access to air travel came the challenge of greater energy consumption. So, innovative means were required not only to limit consumption but to also generate clean energy.

The airports in the five metro cities, which handled over 62 per cent of the total passenger traffic in the year 2013-14, still have a long way to go in so far as cutting down on energy and water consumption is concerned.

Even as a lot of hard work remains to be done in his direction, the Union civil aviation ministry's emphasis on making airports self-sufficient in energy and water requirements, and also capable to feed power to the national grid -- the 'green take-off' plan -- seems to be the right first step in the right direction.

For regular updates on real estate, click here