Malta International Airport is taking another step towards honouring its pledge to monitor and minimise its impact on the environment by joining Airport Council International’s (ACI) Airport Carbon Accreditation programme.

This independent and voluntary programme uses internationally recognised methodologies to assess an airport’s commitments towards better managing its carbon emissions. Once authenticated, these commitments are then officially acknowledged through the award of one of the programme’s four levels of accreditation: mainly Mapping, Reduction, Optimisation, and Neutrality.

Malta International Airport has joined the programme at the Mapping Level, which effectively means that the airport is assessed on the basis of its efforts to measure its carbon footprint. These efforts complement Malta International Airport’s recent publication of its first Sustainability Report.

This report established that the airport had succeeded in reducing its CO₂ emissions by 13.5 per cent per passenger in 2015 – down to 1.98kg from 2.29kg per passenger.

Malta International Airport CEO Alan Borg said: “In joining ACI’s carbon accreditation programme we have a better understanding of our airport’s emissions, which will, in the long term, enable us to take steadier steps towards managing them and achieving carbon reductions. Furthermore, exposure to the best practices of over 150 carbon accredited airports worldwide helps in discovering new avenues towards improving our energy efficiency.”

A spokesperson for ACI Europe said: “Malta International Airport is an example of a dynamic airport with its eyes on the future, both in business terms and in social terms. Their arrival into the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme demonstrates the seriousness of their strategy to address carbon emissions and we look forward to following their progress in the years to come.”

Established in 2009 by ACI Europe, the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme went global in 2014 after its adoption by airports in the Asia-Pacific region, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.