The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recently adopted a Long-Term Aspirational Goal (LTAG) of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Alongside this, the baseline for CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) has been adjusted to 85% of 2019 emissions. These developments have spurred airports worldwide to explore ways to reduce their emissions.
As of 2016, there were over 40,000 airports worldwide (CIA, 2016) with the top 2,500 handling more than 4 billion passengers (IATA, 2018), contributing approximately 15% of emissions from the aviation sector (Greer et al.,2020). Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from airport facilities primarily stem from Landing and Takeoff cycles (LTOs), aircraft operations and ground support vehicles (Rakas et al., 2023).
As a voluntary emissions reporting and certification program, the Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) acknowledges airports' progress toward decarbonization with seven certification levels. Airports at levels 3+, 4+ and 5 must offset their residual emissions with high quality carbon credits.
AlliedOffsets analysed ACA criteria and matched them against our database of 29,000+ carbon projects to identify eligible offset and carbon removal credits. Additionally, we identified the number of eligible credits that are also CORSIA-eligible and originated from highest CCP likelihood scored projects.
Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA)
555 airports worldwide have been accredited by the ACA scheme so far. Airports can participate at one of five progressively stringent levels of accreditation: Level 1-Mapping; Level 2-Reduction; Level 3-Optimisation; Level 4-Transformation; and Level 5.
Airports at Levels 3 and 4 can choose to offset their residual emissions (through offset reductions and/or removals), thereby achieving Level 3+ (Neutrality) and 4+ (Transition) respectively. At Level 5, a key requirement is to achieve net zero for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, with a minimum of 90% own reductions and applying credible offset removals for the residual emissions.
Offsets Reductions
To ensure high quality offsets reductions, ACA sets out qualitative criteria for the use of offsets which meet a high quality threshold.
- Offsets must be real, additional, measurable, verifiable, permanent and unique (not double counted)
- Offsets must be generated by ACA approved independent credit generating programs (Verra, Gold Standard, ACR, CAR, UK Woodland Carbon Code among others)
- Offsets must meet vintage requirements
- Offsets must be generated from selected project types or methodologies
To comply, airports are required to publicly disclose minimum sets of information on offset reductions, and are guided towards project types considered of a ‘higher confidence’ threshold (e.g. efficient lighting, biogas, methane from landfills, small solar), compared to projects of medium confidence (large scale conventional renewables, forestry and land-use, industry efficiency projects included waste heat/gas recovery, blended cement etc.).
We have conducted analysis into the current supply and demand of ACA eligible credits to meet this.
Findings
Currently, there are a total of nearly half a million credits (499,994,926) with a minimum 2019 vintage eligible for the ACA scheme. These credits were generated from close to 3,200 projects (of which just above 3,000 are currently active).
Projects are located across 90 host countries, led by the United States with 538 projects, followed by India (445), China (346), the UK (274), and Turkey (177). The United States also tops the list of countries in terms of available eligible credits (121.76M), followed by India (95.82M), China (46.44M), Turkey (26.08M), and Bangladesh (22.44M).
The search for high-integrity mitigation outcomes
ACA encourages the selection of projects with high environmental and social integrity (co-benefits). These include local air quality, biodiversity, and job creation among others. ICVCM’s Integrity Council’s Governing Board’s approval of ACR, CAR and Gold Standard is set to be followed by assessment of more programs and methodologies in the coming weeks.
ACA accredited airports will face steep sectoral competition for CCP labelled credits, with energy companies retiring more credits most likely to attain the CCP label (31% of retirements) than the aviation sector (10%).
This mirrors what we’ve seen in CORSIA pilot phase demand - where airlines only retired 23% of CORSIA-eligible credits, with 77% of retirements coming from other sectors. CORSIA phase 1 is still hampered by a limited number of eligible credits in the market, which has been bolstered by Guyana Forestry Commission’s issuance of the first correspondingly adjusted credits to the market (ART102).
AlliedOffsets scored carbon projects based on their probability of meeting ICVCM’s threshold for attaining CCP labels: ranked from Very Low, Low, Medium, or High. For details on our methodology, please refer to our report.
Conclusion
The ACA programme represents an ambitious step towards decarbonising the infrastructure of the aviation sector. If airports enter the market, they would compete for nearly half a million credits, sourced from projects across 90 countries. Notably, 45.8 million of these credits meet CORSIA phase 1 eligibility criteria, whilst 58.1 million credits originate from 298 projects with the highest CCP likelihood AO score, as a flag for high integrity of units. With the majority of these projects and credits coming from host countries India, China, Turkey, and the United States, it will remain important to track ICAO’s offsetting requirements for airlines and airports alike.
