India still has to ratify the Paris deal in which the countries vowed to lower down the carbon emission to check the issue of Global Warming. But India has already started efforts in this direction and also will officially ratify the Paris deal on October 2nd, on the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s Birth Anniversary.
In such an effort, the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) in New Delhi has become the first airport in Asia-Pacific to be recognised as carbon-neutral.
The Airports Council International (ACI) made this announcement in Montreal, Canada, on Tuesday.
According to officials, the airport carbon accreditation has upgraded Delhi Airport to ‘Level 3+, Neutrality’, which is the highest level of achievement available to airports across the world.
Carbon neutrality status is granted if the net carbon emissions over an entire year is zero. This means the airport absorbs or offsets the same amount of emission that is generated, officials added.
Most of the nations whose airports have achieved this status so far are in Europe. And Europe is really working hard to deal with the environment related issues and also showing great commitment towards the direction of clean energy and environment protection.
Prabhakara Rao, Chief executive officer of Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said that “Achievement of the accreditation for carbon neutrality is indeed recognition of a great team work. Today we have delivered on our commitment of achieving sustainable solutions for aviation climate change mitigations made at LPAA-COP 21 last year through carbon neutrality. With this achievement, we have set up a new benchmark for other airports in this region.”
IGI has been for some time making efforts to cut down on carbon emissions through various steps including switching to solar power. The IGI airport, which currently produces 2.14 MW power from solar energy aims at scaling it up to 7.84 MW. And if it succeeds in achieving this goal, this will help to make it largely dependent on green energy.
