The picture above shows Neil Robinson and Penny Coates (Managing Director) of East Midlands Airport in the UK  planting the first seedlings in a new willow tree plantation – the first in a UK airport. These trees will be used as a sustainable source of fuel to power a bio-mass boiler which will heat their terminal and the airport reckons that it will reduce carbon emissions by 350 tonnes from its current fuel source. The 26-acre willow farm will be complete by 2013 and the trees will be grown in rotation to ensure a continuous supply.

This is certainly not the first carbon-reduction project from East Midlands Airport – it was the first airport in the UK to commit to carbon neutrality and is one of the launch participants in the ACI Europe Airport Carbon Accreditation programme. It has also gained consent to build a set of wind turbines at the airport which will generate up to 10% of the airport’s electricity needs.

Another project undertaken last year saw the first six month trial of an airport passenger transfer bus powered by liquid biomethane fuel, a carbon neutral fuel. The bus uses gas produced by the decomposition of biomass (ie. organic waste, such as food byproducts) which is created by extracting the natural gas produced by biomass in landfill or by digestion of the biomass byproducts of industries, such as food manufacture and retail.

Neil Robinson, who is the airport’s Director of Sustainability, explains the business case behind these projects in the following video: