New Delhi: 66 Indian Airports are operating on 100% Green Energy, Minister of State for Civil Aviation General (Dr) V. K. Singh (Retired) said in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.
He said following the initiatives of the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) towards achieving carbon neutrality and net zero carbon emission at airports by way of carbon accounting and reporting frameworks, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports have achieved Level 4+ and higher Airports International Council (ACI) Accreditation and have become carbon neutral.
The Minister said airport operators with scheduled operations have been advised to map the carbon emission at their respective airports and to work towards carbon neutrality and net zero emission in a phased manner. MoCA has also advised developers of the upcoming Greenfield Airports and the respective State Governments to work towards achieving carbon neutrality and net zero which includes the use of green energy.
Meanwhile, currently, 14 airports in the country are operated under Public Private Partnership (PPP), and 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI) airports are earmarked for leasing between 2022 and 2025 as per the National Monetisation Pipeline. These 25 AAI airports are namely, Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.
** NA denotes Not applicable: These airports have not been handed over to PPP partners during this period.
*** Profit/loss data related to the period November 2020 to March 2021 as the airport was handed over to the PPP partner in November 2020.
General Singh also informed the Rajya Sabha that more than 130 lakh people have availed of the benefits of the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) – UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) and that 517 RCS routes have so far commenced operations connecting 76 airports, including 9 Heliports and 2 Water Aerodrome.
Under the UDAN Scheme, the government targets to operationalise 1000 UDAN routes and to revive or develop 100 unserved and underserved airports, heliports, and water aerodromes by 2024 for the operation of UDAN flights
Rs. 3751 crores out of Rs. 4500 crores allocated for the development of airports under the scheme have been utilized, out of which Rs. 3751 crores have been utilised since the inception of the scheme. The Viability Gap Funding (VGF) amounting to Rs. 3020 crores has been disbursed to the Selected Airline Operators as of November 28, 2023, he said. State Governments provide a 20% share towards VGF for RCS flights pertaining to their states. However, the share of VGF for North-Eastern states and the Union Territories is 10%.
– global bihari bureau
Great initiative by the Modi led GOI MoCA , New Delhi…
@dhruva4peace