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Aces – Athens: 7th Airport Chief Executives’ Symposium

Details

Day
-
Location
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Book Castle

Each year, Athens International Airport is organizing “ACES-Athens”, a Symposium aiming to be a platform for the exchange of ideas among high-level airport executives. Although “ACES” stands for Airport Chief Executives’ Symposium, it is worth mentioning that esteemed representatives not only from air transport, but also from the tourism, financial and public sectors, participate every year since the 1st Symposium in 2013.

This year, ACES took place on December 4th 2019 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Book Castle, aiming at stimulating the dialogue on “Infrastructure Investments and Impact on Destinations”.

The 7th ACES-Athens Symposium focused on:

  1. Aviation Infrastructure Investments and the Future of Destinations: is there a growth
    vs. sustainability trade-off?
  2. Infrastructure Privatizations and their impact on Destinations: The Greek Paradigm

During the 7th annual Airport Chief Executives’ Symposium “ACES – Athens”, Athens International Airport announced “ROUTE 2025”, its official commitment to achieve Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2025, prior to the target of 2050 set by Europe's Airports in June 2019.

In the official commitment, which was signed jointly by Dr. Yiannis Paraschis, CEO of Athens International Airport and Mr Olivier Jankovec, Director General, ACI EUROPE, Athens Airport, with a focus on 2025, committed to submit to ACI EUROPE:

  • By Q2 2020, a detailed Roadmap for the self-production of clean electricity within the airport boundaries via solar power for self-consumption purposes, aiming to cover 100% of the Airport Company's electricity needs, which corresponds to 91.1% of its current carbon footprint.
  • By Q4 2020, a detailed Roadmap for addressing the remaining 8.9% of its carbon footprint corresponding to direct emissions from fuel consumption onsite (via initiatives such as the use of electric vehicles, biodiesel, heat pumps, etc).

Through this significant, internationally pioneering initiative, Athens International Airport, having already decreased its carbon footprint by more than 40% since 2005 despite the doubling of passenger traffic and becoming accredited at the ultimate level of ACI’s Airport Carbon Accreditation program - Carbon Neutrality - since 2016, has the goal of becoming the first airport operator in Europe to cover 100% its electricity needs by on-site production from renewable sources and zeroing out its direct emissions from fuel consumption.

Additionally, it is worth mentioning that Athens International Airport (AIA) proudly hosted the 1st Digital Sky Challenge (DSC) (https://www.digitalskychallenge.eu) jointly organized by the major aviation stakeholders (i.e. SESAR JU, ACI EUROPE, IATA, EASA, EUROCONTROL) on December 2nd-4th 2019; we feel indeed privileged that aviation unites in Athens for this 48-hour innovation contest in the framework of the SESAR Innovation Days 2019, aiming atcreating new digital technologies that will help meet the future needs of the European aviation system in terms of capacity, safety, efficiency, and environmental impact.

Symposium Agenda here.
Speakers' CVs here.

You can also view presentations here!