Yesterday a total of 31 air ports across Europe signed up to an agreement to cut their CO2 emissions to zero according to airports body ACI Europe.  The Airport Carbon Accreditation includes some of Europe's biggest airports including Paris Charles de Gaulle & Orly, Schiphol, Milan Malpensa, Dublin and Athens.  Europe's busiest airport, London's Heathrow (pictured) was not amongst them but the scheme does cover about 26% of European passenger traffic.  The scheme expects to achieve these by cutting emissions from transport on the ground, making power consumption efficiencies to the air port buildings themselves and boosting renewable energy.

This smacks of Green Wash to us, or at least we need more convincing this is a serious scheme.  Initiatives to cut CO2 can of course ultimately pay for themselves but they do require up front investment which with a predicted 8% drop in passenger numbers predicted this year and a 16% drop in freight is likely to be increasingly tough to find.  Although of course ideas like these are welcomed they do need to be back up by a time frame.  By when are they expecting to cut CO2 to zero?  Answer: that bit isn't figured out yet!