Ambitious targets no flight of fancy for Heathrow

It may be Europe’s busiest airport – the second busiest two-runway airport in the world in fact – but Heathrow has some pretty ambitious targets when it comes to the environment. It is all part of its goal to be known as the most responsible airport in the world.

With the advent of new ceo John Holland-Kaye in July 2014, Liz Hegarty, Heathrow’s head of sustainability and environment, says that Holland-Kaye was keen to make the targets more ambitious and for the airport itself to become more confident.

One of Heathrow’s top 10 goals is to reduce ground-based NOx emissions (aircraft, airside vehicles and airport related traffic) by 5% by 2020. So with 400 companies operating at the airport, many with their own vehicles, where do you start?

“There are 8,000 vehicles with licences to go airside,” explains Hegarty. “Around 10% are currently electric and we are running programmes to encourage operators to work collaboratively to increase this figure.”

This collaborative approach is showcased in Heathrow’s Clean Vehicles Partnership initiative that started up 10 years ago. Boasting similar aims to today – to engage with fleet operators to upgrade their fleets to reduce emissions – it was at first an accreditation scheme, says Simon Collings who works as a consultant to Heathrow’s Sustainable Transport Plan (and has done since its inception in 2003). In those early days, there was lots of effort involved but not much impact on the emissions side, he explains: “Since then, the airport has moved away from that approach. We’re now outcome focused and the quality of engagement has risen. It’s now all about an initiative that makes an impact.”

There are 15 active companies currently in the Partnership. “We target the companies with the biggest fleets with 20 companies accounting for 60% of airside vehicles,” says Collings. “There’s a huge mix of vehicles, some highly specialised. We see them as two distinct groups: conventional (cars, van, lorries) and ground support vehicles (eg tugs, vehicles that help push back planes).”
At present the strategy is to focus on smaller vehicles (under 3.5 tons) and the main spotlight is on electrification. For larger vehicles, the main challenge is the renewal of equipment. Their age means that they are not using the newer, cleaner technologies. However these vehicles represent a significant 20-25 year investment - with some pieces of kit coming in at £50m – so the airport is well aware of just how great a test this is.

One campaign that has proved effective in the under 3.5 ton category, says Collings, is the work Heathrow has done with telemetrics. This is a process that monitors both vehicle and driver performance. “One company piloted the scheme and ‘idling’ [running the engine while going nowhere] - which is a huge source of wasted emissions - dropped by 90%. And fuel consumption improved by 30%.”

With results like that it’s not surprising that from January 2015 all vehicles airside must now have telemetrics installed.
Collings explains that the smoother a person drives, the fewer emissions are made too: “There can be up to a 40% difference on emissions between good and bad drivers.” So Heathrow offers driver training too. Through a partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, they offer the Smarter Driver Programme that usually results in a 15% fuel economy.

A novel incentivisation to change that the airport is currently trialling is the pooling of ground support vehicles. Currently different airlines use different operators. So, for example, when you’re disembarking a flight, the stairway you use won’t belong to the airline but to a specific ground support operator. So while the idea to pool kit is really common sense, it’s also fairly radical, says Hegarty. They are currently trialling a pool of air stairs.

Hegarty points out that with such pilot projects given that Terminal 5 on its own is bigger than Zurich Airport, if any such trials were scaled up across the airport, there would be significant impact.

Employees and passengers are another dimension to Heathrow’s emissions profile. As part of its Sustainable Transport Plan, Heathrow aims to get 40% of the public to access the airport by public transport and to reduce the number of staff who travel to work by car alone. There are 76,000 employees based at the airport so the current non-car target is 5%, which means 4,000 ‘out of their car’. “It’s when you see the numbers that you can see the possible impact,” says Theo Panayi, sustainable transport manager.

“We also focus on vehicles,” explains Panayi. “We’ve recently invested over £160k in hybrid electric buses with our partners so that they now have 15 in the fleet between Slough and Heathrow. So this helps all commuters, not just those coming to Heathrow. And that’s typical of some of the initiatives Heathrow does; it percolates out to the community for greater impact.”

The barriers to behaviour change when it comes to how people get to work are price, time and convenience, maintains Panayi. “We always try and show price and time comparisons to demonstrate why a change would be for the good. You have to relate the change to what drives people. For example, if you’re travelling on a bus you can text and Facebook and you can’t when you drive. It’s about relating the change to things that matter to people. It’s not the environmental side of it that they need to be reminded of.”

Heathrow operates the world’s largest car share scheme with 8,000 employees signed up and provides a discounted public transport card for staff. For travellers, there are electric charging points in the terminal car parks and Heathrow also boasts the first publically accessible hydrogen fuelling station in the UK. The long-term goal is to get all passengers travelling to Heathrow to make the most sustainable choice and choose public transport. “The advent of Crossrail and the expansion at Western Rail will make a big difference,” says Panayi.

Cycling is a relative newcomer to the modes of transport to the airport. While Panayi admits cycling is seasonal, the airport’s cycle hub boasts 2,000 members. “We also have a bike shop where staff can purchase cycles at a discount and also have access to free servicing and maintenance. We always aim to incentivise behaviour change.”

Indeed, Heathrow is currently working with the local boroughs of Hillingdon, Hounslow and local pharma giant GSK to fund cycle routes to the airport.

Through its various initiatives, Heathrow is managing to slow its carbon emissions but the real challenge, says Hegarty, is maintaining that steady decline. “Wide bodied aircraft are the future and will benefit the economy by carrying more passengers but we need to manage their emissions,” she warns.

So how can Heathrow tackle that? “We are working with aircraft manufacturers,” says Hegarty and takes heart from the fact that they have worked successfully together before in the area of noise levels. The night noise restrictions at Heathrow are the strictest in the world and Hegarty is proud to say that the Airbus 380 was designed around those restrictions. So real progress can be made. Indeed, when it comes to Heathrow’s ambition to succeed on emissions, the sky really is the limit.