Southampton Airport

Leading the way with LED

Southampton Airport, ERA’s Airport of the Year 2016, was recognised in particular for its efforts to reduce the airport’s carbon footprint. Tom Watmough, Southampton Airport’s Safety, Health & Environment Manager, explains how the airport has upgraded its lighting, along with applying other strategies, to achieve this.

Southampton Airport uses solar power as well as Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting. Which areas of the airport use these technologies?

We estimate that over 90 per cent of our light fittings are now LED, with the remainder being replaced as they reach end of life. We are very proud to have been the first UK airport to use LED stand lighting and are glad to see how we have paved the way for other UK airports.

Our high-level forecourt, runway guard lights and landside pedestrian crossings are all solar powered. We also have building and car park lighting strategies which utilise light (Lux) sensors so that we make the most of natural light, benefit from a reduced carbon footprint and improved ambience as well as gaining health and wellbeing benefits.

What impact has using solar power and these lighting technologies had on Southampton Airport’s energy consumption?

Alongside significant passenger growth over the past six years, we have achieved an absolute reduction of 24 per cent in our electricity consumption compared to a 2010 benchmark. As a normalised figure, that equates to a 33 per cent drop in kWh

per passenger, which is something we are delighted with and continually seek to improve upon.

Have you seen any cost savings?

Needless to say, there are financial benefits in reducing energy consumption, which work alongside and support the ethical obligation businesses have to reduce their impact on the environment. We have also benefited from significant cost savings as a result of a dynamic utility procurement strategy rather than a standard fixed price contract.

Do you recycle your general waste?

We seek to recycle as much as possible and set annual targets for energy reduction and waste recycling, which are reviewed by our Managing Director and our leadership team each month. Last year’s recycling target was 65 per cent (which includes cardboard, paper, glass, metals and green waste) which I am very pleased to say we achieved. We are continuing to seek improvements and have joined forces with Southampton University to develop a waste management project which will provide a student with the opportunity to gain some real-world environmental work experience in a dynamic environment and help us identify opportunities for the airport to better manage its waste. The remaining 35 per cent of our waste which is not recycled is sent to an Energy Recovery Facility (ERF), meaning 100 per cent diversion from landfill … even the ash from this process is recycled and used as an aggregate for construction!

Have you applied any other measures to reduce the airport’s impact on the environment?

We achieved certification to the Environmental Management System (EMS) standard ISO14001 in 2015, which was a fantastic achievement because it validated that our EMS has a mechanism to deliver continual improvement. We followed this up with ISO55001, the standard for Asset Management, which follows our holistic approach to whole-life management of all assets owned by Southampton Airport.

Operationally, we utilise our Building Management System (BMS) to monitor factors such as Lux levels, wind speed and direction, CO2 and so on, to manage our assets efficiently and reduce utility consumption, run time and associated wear and tear on equipment, therefore increasing asset life. This year, we are seeking to install smart meters, replace our current firefighting foam with a more environmentally friendly product and embark on a full runway drainage replacement project.

We are blessed with a brilliantly engaged and forward-thinking engineering department who have championed this agenda for a long time. As a business, we continue to monitor advancing technologies and have investigated the feasibility of solar farms, geothermal and helix wind turbines and continue to review these and other technologies as they evolve.