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Air quality

Air quality is often an issue for people living in urban areas. Burning fossil fuel to create energy for vehicles, housing and industry emits pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO). As these pollutants can affect human health if safe limits are exceeded, air quality is regulated by the European Union.

We monitor air quality around Heathrow to identify the contribution of different sources to NO2 concentrations at fixed points around the airport. Information at about the quality of air around Heathrow is available through Heathrow Airwatch.

Our approach to managing Heathrow's impact on air quality involves emissions which we control as well as those which we only guide and influence. Our downloadable report Towards a sustainable Heathrow - a focus on air quality describes how we manage emissions associated through:

Control

  • Increasing the efficiency energy use in our buildings and reducing emissions from our vehicles.

Guide

  • Providing electrical power and pre-cooled air supplies at aircraft stands. This reduces the need for aircraft to run on-board auxiliary power units (APUs) or ground power generators to provide electricity and air conditioning while stationary at Heathrow aircraft on the ground.
  • Encouraging companies that operate airport vehicle fleets to use lower-emissions vehicles, reduce mileage and use alternative forms of transport through our Clean Vehicle Programme.
  • Providing incentives for airlines to use aircraft with lower emission engines. All aircraft arriving at Heathrow pay landing charges that are, in-part, determined according to emissions produced during take-off and landing.
  • Offering schemes to encourage airport staff to take public transport to work and to car-share.

Influence

  • Investing £1 billion in rail infrastructure over the past decade and continuing to support rail connections to Heathrow. Road traffic, specifically from the M4 and M25, is the significant contributor to emissions around Heathrow. Although the majority of traffic on motorways near Heathrow is not airport related, we seek to influence more passengers to choose to travel to and from the airport by public transport.

Our strategy

We play our part in driving compliance with EU air quality limit values in residential locations around Heathrow and are developing a new Air Quality Strategy for Heathrow, to be published in 2011.

We manage air quality issues around Heathrow through the following objectives:

1. Reduce emissions from aircraft

Goal: Continue to reduce APU running times.

2011 target:

Meet 72% APU compliance against tightened APU running times by 31st December 2011.

Key actions

1. Work with airlines and ground handlers to increase the use of fixed electrical ground power and pre-conditioned air and reduce running times [Case study: Aircraft on the Ground].

Goal: Encourage airlines to operate aircraft with the lowest practical NOx emissions.

Key actions

  1. Work with industry partners and regulators to understand the trade-offs between noise and aircraft emissions.
  2. Manage emissions from airside vehicles.

2. Manage emissions from airside vehicles.

Goal: Reduce emissions of NOx and CO2 from airside vehicles.

Key actions

  1. Manage Heathrow’s Clean Vehicle Programme.
  2. Progressively increase the percentage of low emission vehicles in the Heathrow Airport Ltd fleet.
  1. Work with the Heathrow Sustainability Partnership to agree an emissions reduction target.

3. Manage emissions from landside vehicles.

Goal: Reduce emissions of NOx and CO2 from airport-related landside vehicles.

Key actions

  1. 1 Assess the opportunities and benefits to encourage the use of low-emission taxis.
  2. 2 Include best available low emissions requirements in all Heathrow-based contracts.

4. Manage emissions from fixed sources.

Goal: Not to exceed pollution permit control (PPC) emission limits.

Key actions

  1. To manage Heathrow Airport Ltd owned boiler plant in compliance with the pollution prevention and control permit.

5. Communicate Heathrow’s impacts on local air quality.

Goal: Maintain 90% data capture for our automatic air quality monitors.

Key actions

  1. Maintain Airwatch website in partnership and update as necessary.
  2. Produce an annual report of progress against the action plan and KPIs.

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