Mumbai Airport Goes Green, Uses Only Renewable Energy

MUMBAI: Renewable Energy has been the talk of the town for a very long time, but it has been quite impossible to shift to green sources completely, especially in the context of a developing country like India. The energy demands of the country are quite huge and there hasn't been ample development in the renewable energy sector yet. While the Northeastern zone has rich avenues to generate hydroelectricity due to its water availability and mountainous terrain, the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat have the prerequisites for generating electricity from wind and the sun.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) at Mumbai is the first Indian airport to launch a hybrid power technology that solely runs on green energy since this April as an effort to reduce its carbon footprint and its journey towards Net Zero emissions. These steps aim towards sustainability in environmental, social and economic structures.

CSMIA initially installed a 1.06 MW rooftop solar power plant, which was eventually strengthened to 4.66 MW. It also has prepared a roadmap to achieve the Net Zero Carbon Emission goal by the year 2029.

CSMIA sources around 5% of the airport's electricity requirement through its onsite solar generation. The rest 95% comes from other green sources such as hydro and wind energy. CSMIA raised their natural energy procurement from 57% in April 2022 to a whopping 98% between May and July 2022. It reached the landmark 100% utilization of renewable sources of energy in August 2022.

Airports and railway stations are some of the largest electricity consumers in the country. International Airports consume way more electricity than domestic ones as most of the services and businesses in-house remain active for 24 hours. And since the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai is one of the largest in the country, it needs a lot of electricity to function.

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