ACA - Airport Carbon Accreditation is a global carbon management program for airports that independently evaluates and recognizes airports' efforts to manage and reduce their CO₂ emissions.
Airport Carbon Accreditation is the only institutionally approved global carbon management certification program for airports. Independently evaluates and acknowledges airports' efforts to manage and reduce their carbon emissions through 6 levels of certification: “Mapping”, “Reduction”, “Optimization”, “Neutrality”, “Transformation” and “Transition”.
Thanks to its 6-level certification, Airport Carbon Accreditation acknowledges that airports are at different stages of the comprehensive carbon management journey. It is a program for airports of all sizes that extends beyond hubs and regional airports with scheduled passenger traffic to include general aviation and freight-oriented airports.
Airport Carbon Accreditation is also the only global, airport-specific carbon standard based on internationally accepted methodologies. It provides airports with a common framework for activated carbon management with measurable target posts. The program is site specific and provides flexibility to consider national or local legal requirements while ensuring that the methodology used is always sound.
Airport Carbon Accreditation seeks to enable the airport industry to effectively reduce its carbon footprint, benefiting from increased efficiency through reduced energy consumption, shared expertise and knowledge exchange, and better communication of results. The substantial number of airports certified at all levels of the program clearly demonstrate that, regardless of size or geography, these airports are pioneers and are actively reducing aviation's carbon footprint on land.
As part of the Airport Carbon Accreditation application process, based on each airport's carbon footprint and the chosen accreditation level, the airport's carbon management and stakeholder plans must be independently verified by a third party before being evaluated by the program Manager, WSP. This type of verification can only be done by validators who meet certain threshold qualifications and have successfully followed a program webinar and passed the relevant online written exam. They are then listed as approved validators for the purposes of the program.