CIAL wins UN's highest environmental honour

Kochi: The Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) has won the Champion of Earth Prize -2018, the highest environmental honour instituted by United Nations.

CIAL has been honoured for being the first airport in the world to be fully powered by solar energy.

A communiqué signed by Erik Solheim, United Nation’s Global chief of Environment and executive director, UNEP, sent to V J Kurian, managing director, CIAL stated that “this is the United Nation’s highest environmental accolade and reflects your leadership in the use of sustainable energy.”

The award will be presented at a gala ceremony on the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York on September 26 2018.

Earlier a UN team led by Erik Solheim had visited CIAL to study its solar initiatives and held discussions with authorities including chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who is also the chairman of CIAL.

During his visit Solheim had revealed to the media that United Nations was intended to endorse Cochin airport officially as the world’s first airport fully powered by solar energy.

UN established the Champion of Earth award in 2005 to recognise outstanding environmental leaders from the public and private sectors and from civil society.

CIAL, the company which owns and operates India’s first airport built under Public Private Partnership Mode became power neutral in August 2015, with the commissioning of its 12 Mwp (Mega Watt Peak) solar power plant.

In April, it managed to scale up the installed capacity to 30 MWp.

V J Kurian, who pioneered the idea, said the UN recognition would transcend CIAL’s green ideas to a global audience.

“ We showed the world that big infrastructure projects like airports can be put into operation fully using alternative energy sources. By September 2018, the solar capacity at CIAL will be increased to 40 MWp, with a power potential of 60 million units per annum and resulting in a cost saving of approximately Rs 40 crore per annum to the airport.

This will also avoid carbon emissions by more than 9 lakh metric tonnes over the next 25 years, which is equivalent to planting 90 lakh trees or not driving 2400 million miles,” Kurian said.

In order to ensure optimum land utilization, CIAL has successfully implemented organic farming of vegetables in the space between solar panels.

The airport, which is fourth in the country in terms of international traffic and seventh in total traffic, handled ten million passengers in 2017-18.