Belgrade airport commissions solar power plant

Serbia’s Nikola Tesla Airport will be supplied with electricity produced at a 1 MW solar power plant. The facility was installed near the airport complex, on the road to Surčin, next to the new Tesla car park. It consists of nearly 3,000 photovoltaic panels spread over a plateau of ​​15,900 square meters.

The expected annual output of the solar power plant is about 1,130,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green electricity, enough to supply about 430 households. The investment will reduce the airport’s CO2 emissions by 900 tons per year, said airport operator Belgrade Airport, member of the French company Vinci Airports.

Vinci has reduced CO2 emissions by 28% since 2018 by installing solar power plants in its airport network. The total installed capacity of the facilities reached 30 MW.

The installation of the PV plant in Belgrade is part of the global efforts of the Vinci Airports directed towards the energy transition.

The airport goal is to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

François Berisot, CEO of Belgrade Airport, said that with sustainable operations, the company strives to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Since 2018, the airport has been implementing environmental projects including the installation of a natural gas heating plant, a solid waste processing plant, and a wastewater processing plant, said Berisot.

In November 2020, Belgrade Airport joined the Airport Carbon Accreditation program – ACA for the management of carbon dioxide emissions, and got a level 1 certificate for the facility, while level 2 certification is underway. Also, an initiative was launched to implement the 50001 standard on energy efficiency, which will place Belgrade Airport among the few companies in the country that have aligned their operations with it.

Of note, at the beginning of the year, the Nikola Tesla Airport put into operation a natural gas-fueled trigeneration facility for the production of heat, electricity and cooling. The facility was converted from fuel oil.