Berlin Airports guarantees the air traffic infrastructure for the capital region of Berlin Brandenburg with the airports Schoenefeld and Tegel.
From 2012, all air traffic will flow through the new Capital Airport Berlin Brandenburg International BBI. In the first step, Tempelhof Airport was closed on 30 October 2008. Tegel Airport will be closed in 2012 when BBI opens.
Environmentally friendly airports
Active human and environmental protection: reducing flight noise, avoiding waste, saving energy.
Berlin Airports is actively working to protect the environment and has made its actions transparent. In October 2004, Tegel Airport became the first of the Berlin’s airports to be certified under the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and receive DIN EN ISO 14001 certification.
EMAS is a voluntary management tool to enhance the environmental performance of organisations by checking achievements and making continuous improvements. The Tegel environmental audit included some of the airport’s key clients, such as airlines, check-in & handling services, and catering firms, as these companies also run their own operations at the airport.
Due to the impending closure of Tegel Airport, EMAS certification took place for the last time in November 2007. The environmental management system based on the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and DIN EN ISO 14001 will be continued at the Berlin’s airports in order to ideally prepare Berlin Airports to meet the challenges of sustainable and environmentally responsible growth once the new Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport BBI opens.
BBI-planning
Concentrating all Berlin air traffic at a single location offers ecological benefits over the current airport system – which is fragmented due to the historical division of Berlin – in terms of reducing land use and disturbances from noise and traffic. To counter the expansion of Schoenefeld Airport, the innercity airports Tegel and Tempelhof will be closed.
Economic operating and maintenance costs are a pivotal element in the planning for BBI. The development engineers place a high value on ensuring that the individual buildings and structures achieve optimum energy consumption levels. In addition to the use of highly innovative heat recycling systems, the planning concept is also exploring the integration of regenerative energy systems – e.g. geothermal systems or the use of rainwater for cooling.
BBI noise protection programme
By relocating air traffic to the outskirts, hundreds of thousands of residents in Berlin and Brandenburg will no longer have to live with aircraft noise. The residents of Schoenefeld will be protected to a large extent by the conditions imposed by the planning permission decision.
Zuelow lowlands
The largest single project of the compensation and replacement measures is the ecological upgrading of the Zuelowniederung. The area is located in southern Brandenburg between Mittenwalde, Dabendorf and Groß Machnow/Rangsdorf and consists of about 2,600 hectares of lowlands. The Berlin Airports entered into a cooperation with the Landschaftspflegeverein Mittelbrandenburg e.V. (former: Verein für Landschaftspflege und Umweltschutz Teltow-Fläming e.V.) in 2003.
The object is to upgrade the agriculturally oriented, open lowlands and by means of smaller partitions of the utilization and emphasis of the existing structures design the landscape in a more varied manner. The compensation measures should improve the living conditions for flora and fauna and therefore increase the quality of the Zuelowniederung.
Protection of trees
Protecting the tree population is one of the most important parts of ecological monitoring of construction. Measures to avoid and minimise damage to the tree population range from protecting the roots using fences and burden sharing, through protecting the tree trunks to using optimised construction methods. This helped to save three approx. 200-year-old oak trees standing off site to the south-west of the small town of Selchow. The oak trees are situated right in the path of the supply and waste disposal lines for BBI. According to technical plans, open cut tunnelling was envisaged for laying the lines. For this, the trees would have had to have been felled. Instead, however, a construction method was used whereby the pipes were bored 2.50 metres below the oak trees, so that the old trees could be preserved.
Bat protection
In the course of clearing the construction site for BBI, bat research had to be carried out on conserving the small mammals, which are protected throughout Europe, when demolishing buildings and felling trees. The old trees in particular were checked for “bat occupation”, as bats like nothing more than to use former hollows of certain types of birds or deeper cracks in trees as their summer quarters. The trees in which bats were sitting were marked and only felled once the bats were relocated to their winter quarters. As a rainwater storage reservoir for BBI, the Rotberg reservoir was also extended and upgraded in such a way as to provide an ecological safe haven for the bats.
Relocation of amphibians
To conserve particularly endangered amphibians protected throughout Europe, these were taken from their natural habitat and put in newly built replacement waters before construction work began. As early as 2005, Berlin Airports created four replacement waters off site in close consultation with the nature conservation authorities. A total of several thousand amphibians were relocated by ecologists, including garlic toads, common toads, moor frogs and other species of frog found in the ponds. Relocation was scheduled to take place within three years. The waters on site have almost completely been cleared, relocation was a success. The development of the amphibians in the replacement waters is under constant ecological monitoring.
Compensatory measures
Berlin Airports is implementing a whole host of compensatory measures within the scope of expanding Schoenefeld Airport. For example, planting new trees for every tree felled, creating a replacement for every sealed area. In addition, biotope monitoring prevents disruptions to the area surrounding the airport during construction.
With an ever-growing volume of air traffic, airports are subject to increasingly stringent environmental standards. However, it is not enough to merely respect legal regulations and raise awareness of environmentally conscious behaviour. Other initiatives play an equally important role, including measures to create ideal conditions for respecting environmental issues in all areas of airport operation. For many years now, Berlin Airports have pursued a comprehensive policy of environmental management. This is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to environmental protection as a strategic corporate objective.
If you will be flying into Europe and Germany in particular then perhaps consider flying into Berlin’s Green Airports to lower your carbon footprint. Have a look at Berlin Airport for further information, flights and special offers.
Source: Berlin Airport
Editorial Director
