Airport Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory: A Primer (2024)
Chapter: 7. Report and Disclose Emissions
7. Report and Disclose Emissions
As you prepare your GHG emissions inventory, you will also want to consider how, and with whom, to share the results. For example, is the GHG inventory for internal planning purposes only or do you intend to share the results with other stakeholders (e.g., tenants, suppliers) or the general public?
Reporting or disclosing GHG emissions and progress over time can help build awareness and support for the work among internal and external stakeholders, demonstrate public commitment and progress in addressing the climate change challenge, and supply organizations (e.g., tenants) within your airports value chain with information needed to inform their own sustainability efforts.
This section offers best practices associated with preparing a GHG inventory for internal reporting and external disclosure.
7.1 GHG Emissions Inventory Reports
Historically, airports, like other organizations, sometimes began by reporting the results of their GHG emissions inventory to an internal stakeholder group prior to disclosing emissions. This approach was often intended to raise awareness and support, to develop consensus around goals, and to begin to plan emission reduction activities prior to disclosing emissions. However, increasingly, regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive within the European Union, require that some organizations disclose their GHG emissions. In response to regulations and to provide greater transparency, organizations are increasingly disclosing emissions.
What Should I include in my Airport’s GHG Emissions Inventory Report?
Your airport’s GHG emission inventory report should include general information about the GHG emission inventory such as:
- Inventory boundaries,
- Identification of the base year,
- General overview of the methods and emission factors used to calculate emissions,
- Explanation for excluding emission source categories if relevant, and
- Discussion of major assumptions, areas of uncertainty and opportunities for improvement.
The GHG emission inventory report should focus primarily on the results of the GHG emission inventory and include:
- Total airport GHG emissions, emissions totals by Scope, and emission totals by source category,
- Emissions data reported in CO2e and by constituent gas (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFC, PFC, NF3, etc.),
- Emission trends (beginning in the second inventory year) and explanation of any significant changes over time,
- Emissions by facility, business unit, and/or other organizational constructs, and
- GHG emission intensity by metrics such as full-time employees and square footage.
Common GHG Disclosure Organizations, Frameworks, and Certification Programs
CDP
CDP is a non-profit that supports a global disclosure platform where investors, companies, cities, states, and regions can submit GHG emissions information. CDP collects information about an entity’s environmental impacts and the actions it is taking to reduce them. CDP offers general climate change, water, and forests questionnaires as well as several sector specific questionnaires, including a transport services questionnaire. Airport operators can respond to CDP’s transport services climate change questionnaire to disclose their emissions on an annual basis. The CDP questionnaire includes general questions as well as questions pertaining to inventory boundaries, base year, GHG emissions from Scope 1, 2, and 3 sources, GHG reduction goals, biodiversity impacts, and airport infrastructure changes, among others.
TCFD
TCFD is a reporting framework that provides guidance to entities that are looking to disclose their climate-related risk either internally or externally. TCFD helps entities identify key metrics used to measure and manage climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as those consistent with cross-industry, climate-related categories. TCFD offers a transportation and airline specific disclosure framework that can be used to better understand and report or disclose GHG emissions and sustainability information. TCFD recommends that entities provide information related to general operations, sustainability reporting and targets, community investment, climate change and other sustainability risks, and health, safety, security, and environment in their report or disclosure.
ACA
The ACA is a global carbon management certification program for airports that assesses the efforts of airports to manage and reduce their carbon emissions (essentially their level of greenness) through seven levels of accreditation: mapping, reduction, optimization, neutrality, transformation, transition, and maintain. The ACA offers a common framework for active carbon management with measurable goalposts. Entities that wish to obtain ACA accreditation must meet specific requirements through GHG reporting or disclosure.
7.2 Disclose Emissions
Organizations that disclose emissions:
- Promote openness, transparency, and information sharing,
- Are positioned to manage climate-related transition risks and opportunities,
- Increase preparedness to meet GHG regulations if and when needed, and
- Achieve higher emission reductions than organizations that do not disclose emissions while maintaining comparable financial performance.
There are options available for disclosing emissions ranging from using a published airport report (e.g., sustainability report) to disclosing through disclosure organizations, such as CDP. When disclosing emissions to organizations such as CDP, the disclosure organization stipulates the information (e.g., all Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions) that should be disclosed. You have more flexibility over what is included within a disclosure when sharing using an airport report; however, it is best practice to apply disclosure frameworks such as the that provided by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Leveraging existing frameworks will support organized, substantive, and consistent reporting aligned with stakeholder expectations.
