KEY ISSUES TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING MOBILE CONCRETE PRODUCTION PLANTS FOR AIRPORT RUNWAY AND MAINTENANCE
Mobile Cement Mixing Can Help Meet the Carbon Challenge Tom Cropper, Editor Airports around the world are setting themselves the challenge to become net zero somewhere in the 2030s. Could mobile concrete mixers provide part of the answer?
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HE AVIATION sector comes in for intense criticism for its carbon output, but it’s not always fair. While it is one of the most carbon intense industries in the world, the sector has worked harder than most to reduce its impact on the environment. While the Paris Climate Accords commit the world to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, many airports around the world are going a step further with some hoping to hit the target in the early 2030s.
Ambitious Targets At the UK’s largest airport, Heathrow, they have already reduced emissions from its operations by more than 90%. It’s the first international hub to become carbon neutral and the first to commit to achieving net zero carbon emissions by the mid-2030s. Its action plan ‘Target Net Zero’ aims to decarbonize operations, flights and help the industry meet its overall plan of net zero by 205012. Towards the end of 2019, Birmingham Airport also set itself a target of net zero by 2033. The airport’s CEO, Nick Burton, admitted that they did not yet have the answers about how this will be done, but they are currently working on an action plan which they hope will answer some of those questions. “We don’t have all the answers about how we will hit this target,” he said, “but we are confident that through innovation and collaboratively working with industry, government, manufacturers, on-site partners and employees, we can reach our target by 203313.”
Going Beyond Paris It’s difficult to overstate just how big a challenge this is. Airports such as Heathrow and Birmingham have decided to move more quickly than the Government and the wider aviation industry which have set their sights on hitting the target by 2050. However, they will be doing so against a backdrop
of a rapid growth in airport traffic and capacity. Although COVID 19 has slowed growth, the longterm picture remains the same. Millions of people are taking to the skies every year and capacity will need to increase in order to meet it. For an example of the uncertainty surrounding expansion plans we can take the Aviation Environment Federation’s analysis of Gatwick’s 2019 Master Plan for expansion14. This allows for opening its existing standby runway while also opening up land for building another. It hopes to grow passenger numbers to 70 million per annum by 2032/33, a 53% increase on the 45.7 million passengers who used the airport in 2017/1815. However, it is uncertain about its impact on the environment. The Masterplan estimates emissions will grow from 0.77MtCO2 in 2017 to 0.95MtCO2 in 2028, according to the Aviation Environment Federation. However, estimates from the Department of Transport which include more indirect emissions, suggest they may hit 2.7MtCO2 by 2050 in a scenario in which Heathrow opens a third runway and Gatwick’s standby runway remains unused16. The unavoidable conclusion is that it will be very difficult to expand capacity in the way airports want while meeting those targets. To do so, airports will have to look at every part of the process including the way in which cement is mixed and transported to the work site. Here, tremendous gains are to be had by moving beyond traditional methods of cement mixing towards something which is more mobile and efficient.
Although COVID 19 has slowed growth, the longterm picture remains the same. Millions of people are taking to the skies every year and capacity will need to increase in order to meet it
How Mobile Concrete Mixing Can Help Mobile concrete mixing is one way in which airports can achieve their emission reduction targets. It allows for more precise measuring WWW.AIRPORTTECHNOLOGYREPORTS.COM | 13
