Airport Experience® News - Customer Service Issue 2024

Left: The city of Austin requires all Austin Bergstrom International Airport construction projects – including the nine gate expansion currently underway - to meet minimum LEED Silver certification. Photo credit: Dror Baldinger

including Certified, Silver and Gold awards, with an additional eight buildings pending LEED certification and one pending Parksmart Silver certification. In addition, the airport announced last year that it had been added to the city of Atlanta’s Solar Energy Purchase Agreement to add solar panels to 16 sites on its campus. “As part of ATL’s comprehensive Green Building Policy as well as the ATL Carbon Policy, the airport has committed to reduce scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions,” notes Dr. Quinta Warren, ATL’s director of sustainability. “On new construction projects, this commitment includes evaluating and reducing the environmental impacts, including embodied carbon, of all materials that comprise the structure and enclosure for those projects.” Warren explains that carbon reduction goals are being achieved on four active capital improvement projects, first by quantifying the environmental impact of building materials then specifying environmental targets for the materials, such as global warming potential, and finally procuring materials that meet or exceed the targets. “Additionally, technologies such as carbon mineralization of concrete and the use of maturity meters to more accurately predict in-situ strength of concrete to reduce overall cement content are being employed on new construction projects to reduce embodied impacts wherever possible, while maintaining the project schedule,” Warren says. As part of Denver International Airport (DEN)’s goal to remain one of the most sustainable airports in the world, it has had a longstanding internal requirement that all new buildings are designed and

constructed to at least the LEED Gold standard, says Scott Morrissey, DEN’s senior vice president of sustainability. “We use LEED not as a goal in itself, but as an accountability framework to ensure that new construction is as efficient as possible to support achievement of our long-term emissions reduction goals.” Morrissey adds that DEN is tracking high LEED Gold or LEED Platinum for three concourse expansion projects that will be officially certified later this year. The airport’s current LEED-certified buildings include Denver International Airport Hotel and Transit Center at Platinum status, Fire Station 35 at Gold, Concourse C West Expansion at Gold, Concourse B West Expansion at Gold, and the DEN Data Center at Silver. When constructing its new terminal, Kansas City International Airport (MCO) had the unusual opportunity to start from scratch, and set its sights on LEED certification. The terminal, which opened in 2023, is the first in the Midwest to earn LEED Gold status and just the second in the U.S. after San Francisco International Airport (SFO)’s Terminal 2. According to Kaley Skantz, airport spokesperson and public information officer for San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport (OAK) and the Port of Oakland , OAK’s extension to Terminal 2, constructed in 2007, was the country’s first LEED-certified airport passenger terminal when it became Silver certified in 2010. Since then, the airport’s air traffic control tower earned LEED Gold in 2013. “We’re pleased that our partners have also taken sustainability seriously: The FAA installed a solar array on top of their

Above: As part of Denver International Airport’s goal to remain one of the most sustainable airports in the world, it has had a longstanding internal requirement that all new buildings are designed and constructed to at least the LEED Gold standard.

parking facilities adjacent to OAK’s air traffic control tower, and in 2005, FedEx completed an 81,000-square-foot solar array, covering the roofs of two buildings, which at the time it was built was the largest corporate solar power system in the state of California,” Skantz says. With aging facilities, Skantz says “a significant amount of work goes into maintaining” the airport, but airport executives are always on the lookout for upgrades. In addition, “any new projects that we undertake go through a review to ensure sustainability opportunities are incorporated in the earliest project stages,”

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AX NEWS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024