AIR CARBON
Curbing Global Warming starts here!
Ground Transportation Traffic
0.005
kg CO2
Emissions per passenger
Aircraft traffic
1.47
kg CO2
Emissions per passenger
Real-time carbon emissions estimate
Update every 2 minutes
Transport accessing the airport: cars and public transport emissions are computed in real time.
In today’s globalized world, mobility has become a central part of our lives and demand for air travel has grown significantly.
PROJECT
The story behind Air Carbon
Ardian Infrastructure welcomes students every two years for a two month program to build a digital tool. For the 2019 edition of the program, we challenged students to build a tool dedicated to a key focus area for our investments: carbon emissions in the context of the COP 21 Paris Agreement.
As a well-experienced investor in airports, we wanted to understand how much carbon an airport emits each year and from which operations,in order to plan how to limit these emissions.
Paul Brenot Vinciguerra
HEC
“As a Digital student at HEC, this program required a range of skills: I had to quickly become knowledgeable about the airport sector and carbon emissions calculation in order to find and analyze the right data. I was really impressed to see how involved the Ardian Infrastructure team was with the Cop 21 Paris Agreement challenge. It was very inspiring.”
Louise Badarani
HEC • POLYTECHNIQUE
“This project demonstrated how digital tools can play a key part in understanding and solving current environmental issues. Moreover, it is an example of the growth of responsible investment from the financial sector and thus motivated me to join Ardian.”
Fabien Stadelwieser
ECOLE 42
“I’m currently studying IT at 42 a French coding school. What I like about being a dev is flexibility and options available. Ardian Infrastructure was the best possible place to discover the world of finance. I loved being able to work on a topic as impactful as carbon emissions.”
Ardian’s commitment to fight climate change
Ardian’s conviction is that finance has a responsibility to deliver positive outcomes for our society and the environment. Our ambition is to have a meaningful impact across our communities of stakeholders by empowering individuals to collectively create sustainable value.
Actively engaged in the fight against climate change, Ardian is a founder and signatory of the Initiative Climat 2020 (IC20), launched by five Private Equity firms to contribute to the low-carbon transition following the Paris Agreement.
Learn more about Ardian’s Sustainable strategy here
KEY NUMBERS
Do you know what a ton of CO2 represents?
3500 km with a 4x4 car
840 kg of beef produced
7000 km with a small diesel car
1 Paris-New York return flight
STEP UP FOR THE PLANET
Carbon emissions: levers for improvement
Amongst several options to reduce our carbon footprint, we can lower emissions by changing transportation habits.
There are several ways you can mitigate your carbon footprint:
• Consider buying a hybrid car as your next vehicle.
• In the meantime, if you live in a city, rental bikes as well as electric cars are available.
• Car sharing is another option, which will make your travel both cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
Here are 3 tips for making flying more sustainable:
• Check airlines for their carbon emissions (e.g. with Atmosfair Airline Index).
• Choose a direct flight, since most emissions are generated during take-off and landing.
• Compensate for your carbon emissions.
Carbon offsetting
Carbon offsetting is yet another way to compensate for carbon emissions. Carbon offsetting encourages customers to pay a little extra to help compensate for the carbon emissions induced by their travels. This marginal contribution is then used toward the financing of environmental projects, such as tree planting schemes or the installation of solar panels, which will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.
BUILDING THE FUTURE
2050 Projections
New technologies which reduce the carbon impact of energy, industrial processes and products will have a significant impact. For an airport, we have considered two new disruptive technologies: new planes and new cars.
Here we display the results of current aircrafts being gradually replaced by planes that reduce fuel burn, use biofuel and accommodate more passengers. We can see that this technology is not sufficient to reduce carbon emissions to the COP21 targets.
Here we display the results of all cars being replaced by electric cars. In this scenario, better public transportation will capture 15% of all car traffic. This case enables carbon emissions in line with the COP 21 Paris Agreement 2°C target.
METHODOLOGY
How we did the maths
Out of all carbon emitted by an airport, 95% of these emissions are caused by aircrafts and transport accessing the airport.
For aircrafts: Air Carbon uses an Application Programming Interface (API) to provide real time positions of planes taking off and landing. Air Carbon then refers to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for emissions from engines' aircrafts to give an estimation of greenhouse gas emitted by planes and passenger each minute.
For ground transportation: Air Carbon estimates the number of passengers travelling to the airport or leaving the airport. Air Carbon then applies to this figure an average division of transportation (by cars, trains and buses). Emissions per passenger are calculated every minute in accordance with emissions linked to all transport possible.
The ambition of Ardian Infrastructure is to support portfolio companies in their transition and evolution towards a low-carbon economy