Aviation’s green transition remains a top priority for Swedavia

Swedavia’s “green transition” continued in 2022 with a number of key achievements, according to the company’s newly published Annual and Sustainability Report for 2022.

“The aviation industry’s climate transition is necessary so that people can continue to meet in the future, despite long distances, in the most efficient way possible,” writes Swedavia’s president and CEO, Jonas Abrahamsson.

“For Swedavia, this work has the highest priority and in 2022 we took important steps forward, including through activities to stimulate the demand for sustainable aviation fuel and enabling the charging of electric aircraft at several of our airports.

“But we and the industry should not settle for that, this work needs to accelerate further in the future.”

Some of the important climate measures implemented by Swedavia in 2022 include:

– At Stockholm Arlanda, Göteborg Landvetter and Malmö airports, fossil carbon dioxide emissions from landing air traffic decreased by a total of about 175 tonnes using so-called curved approaches on 967 occasions. Swedavia was granted permission to carry these out as recently as in 2021.

– Swedavia conducted its annual public tender process to purchase sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in order to promote sustainable business travel. Through the tender, nearly 170 tonnes of SAF was used for refuelling in 2022, with most of this going to Swedavia and the remainder to other participating organisations.

The fuel is equivalent to the amount used by over 3,000 passengers flying round-trip between Stockholm and Berlin and resulted in an estimated 500 tonne decrease in carbon dioxide emissions compared to regular jet fuel.

– At the turn of 2021-2022, Swedavia introduced climate-differentiated take-off and landing charges, with the model at Stockholm Arlanda Airport and Göteborg Landvetter Airport including SAF.

This means airlines that use the most climate-efficient aircraft and SAF are given preferential treatment at the cost of those that use aircraft with a worse climate performance. The charges will serve as a catalyst to help reduce the industry’s climate impact.

– Six of Swedavia’s airports were certified at the highest level of Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA), which is a framework for assessing the climate work of airports.