How Green Is My airport

A 12 MW solar project to fully power its operations is one of the many eco-friendly firsts for the Cochin International Airport. 

- Manu Balachandran

The Cochin International Airport has had the distinction of being a first of its kind even before it started operations. In 1999, it was the first Indian airport to have been built on the public-private-partnership model. The project was funded by the Kerala government and foreign investors. Since it began operations with an international flight to Saudi Arabia’s Dammam, the airport has become the country’s seventh busiest, handling more than 1,000 flights a week. It sees over 10 million passengers annually, a number that is expected to rise further to 30 million by 2021-22.

Since the past few years, the airport has also been a hotbed for innovative sustainable practices. Much of that has to do with the setting up of CIAL Infrastructures Limited (CIL) in 2012, a subsidiary company that focuses on power and other infrastructure sectors.