PACE Airports to Revolutionise International Standards for Airport Emissions Reporting

PACE, Fexco’s leading aviation sustainability data and analytics platform, has expanded its product offering with PACE Airports and is announcing Christchurch Airport as its first customer. PACE has established itself as the market leader for aviation financiers and is trusted by the world’s largest banks, like JP Morgan, and the second largest aircraft lessor in the world, SMBC AC, to inform them on their financed aviation emissions.

Christchurch Airport is a global leader in sustainable airport management and a pioneer in the Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) program. It is the first airport in the world to reach level 4 in 2020 and to achieve level 5 accreditation in 2023. It is among only 18 other airports worldwide to achieve this rating. The airport chose PACE Airports so they can track, analyse and action live data rather than on an annual basis. Leveraging multiple new data points allows the sustainability team to have more accurate data-led conversations with airline operators and external stakeholders.

Airports globally are challenged to understand and track their aviation-related emissions. One of the leading causes of this is a considerable lack of consistency within the industry in defining a standardised methodology that can be independently verified. Calculating carbon emissions is usually done on an annual basis at the end of the year, so the lack of real-time data inhibits airports from making actionable decisions to lower their carbon footprint. PACE Airports offers real-time aviation emissions calculations at the click of a button, allowing sustainability teams to focus on the actions rather than the calculations.

In addition, banks can use PACE Airports to evaluate emissions in airport financing deals. Both banks and airports can rely on a single source of truth for emissions metrics to measure performance in sustainability-linked finance deals.

PACE Airports tracks all commercial flight activity globally and calculates specific emissions based on over 10 billion data points, right down to the engine on the wing. It is highly configurable to allow airports to track specific runway taxi times and distances, enabling them to drill down into the minute details for highly accurate output data.

Claire Waghorn, Sustainability Transition Leader at Christchurch Airport, said: “Christchurch Airport has always leaned into sustainability and innovation. We first started tracking our emissions in 2006, and we have continually challenged what more we can do in decarbonisation through innovation and adaptability. Our strategy has always been data-driven, and PACE unlocks a new level of insight and intelligence that is really exciting for us as we continue our sustainability journey.

“At Christchurch Airport, our key focus on this sustainability journey has always been optimising our entire operations to reduce emissions; the insights from the PACE Airports platform now give us data to consider our aviation-related emissions across the entire airport operations.”

Bertie Murphy, CSO of Fexco Group, added: “Our vision at PACE is to be the independent aviation emissions source across the aviation value chain, trusted and relied upon by all stakeholders. Expanding into Airports is a natural next step in the evolution of our product. We are thrilled to welcome Christchurch Airport, a global leader in sustainability, as a customer. We are enthused to see the impact the data and insights from PACE are having at Christchurch Airport, supporting the team in delivering on their emissions reduction targets.”

PACE delivers up-to-date emissions data, covering over 99% of commercial flights, recording over 370,000 individual routes and over 10 billion flight data points, which are updated every 24 hours. PACE is trusted by the largest aviation financiers in the world, such as JP Morgan Chase, and SMBC AC, the second largest aircraft lessor in the world.

See more stories here.