Kenya Airports Authority aims to become greenest airport operator by 2022

October 01, 2019: Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has recently released its going-green initiative with a goal of becoming the greenest airport operator in Africa by 2022. The initiative is in line with the authority's 2018-2022 strategic plan aimed at guiding its strategic direction over the next five years. 

As reported by Xinhuanet, the former MD and CEO Jonny Andersen of KAA in a statement issued last week, stated, "It is now a reality that climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing mankind. Aviation has been criticised as a major contributor to carbon emissions and this has lead to steady growth of airports embracing green energy. As Kenya Airports Authority, we would like to place Kenya in the centre of this momentum with our goal to be the greenest airport operator in the region by the year 2022." 

Andersen quit KAA on September 30, 2019. 

The authority's 2018-2022 strategic plan highlight's environmental stewardship as one of it's main strategic areas stating that the organisation will seek to become carbon neutral across its network of 18 aerodromes by implementing Airports Council International's (ACI) Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) programme, undertake afforestation, solar power, and rainwater harvesting programme, and acquire the ISO 14001-2015: environmental management system (EMS) standard. KAA's going-green initiative kicked off in December 2018 when the president of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu officially launched the ground-mounted 500kw solar power generation facility at Moi International Airport in Mombasa; making it the first airport on the African continent to install a solar power system replacing usage of auxiliary power units (APU) or ground power units (GPU) to reduce carbon emissions from aircraft parked at gate.