Heathrow’s Matt Gorman awarded MBE for ? reducing airport’s carbon emissions?
Matt Gorman, who has been Heathrow’s “Sustainability Director” for years, and is now its “Carbon Strategy Director” has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, for his work in cutting the airport’s carbon emissions. He has not, of course, reduced the emissions of the planes using Heathrow. Far from it, he has been a keen advocate of a Heathrow 3rd runway, would could increase the carbon emissions by 50%. But he is keen for the airport to be “carbon neutral” and has aspirations for it to be zero-carbon. In reality the carbon emissions of “Scope 1″ and ” Scope 2″ activities at the airport, and even the “Scope 3” activities, excluding the aircraft, amount to well below 1MtCO2 per year, (2018) while the flights that year emitted around 18MtCO2. But Matt will have been nominated by someone for the award, and that has to be approved the Cabinet Office and the Queen. Heathrow’s John Holland-Kaye was at the G7 as Heathrow signed up to Prince Charles’ Terra Carta initiative – all the businesses who are part of that were invited to Cornwall – so they could mix with the leaders.
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“Heathrow Airport: Berkshire dad gets MBE on Queen’s Birthday Honours List for work to make travel greener”
– sic
Matthew Gorman is Carbon Strategy Director for the airport
By Hugh Fort, Reporter
11 JUN 2021
A Berkshire man who has overseen major projects to reduce the environmental effect of Heathrow Airport has been awarded the MBE on the Queens Birthday Honours list.
Matthew Gorman, 48, is the Carbon Strategy Director of the airport and has headed up numerous projects to try to reduce the amount of carbon created.
He has led Heathrow’s award-winning leadership plan for sustainable growth and said he is “hugely proud” of the airport becoming the first to commit to becoming zero-carbon by 2050.
He told BerkshireLive one of the initiatives he had led was the airport spending £94,000 on obtaining 70 acres of peatland near Manchester, which led to carbon savings on almost 64,000 flights to New York.
He also played a key role in setting up the Heathrow Centre of Excellence, which aims to bring together experts in sustainability and allow them to try out their ideas at the airport.
Matthew also chaired the Heathrow Noise Forum in 2015, working with people living near the airport over changes to the airspace.
The dad of two, who lives in the Reading area, was thrilled at receiving the award. He said: “I’m very excited about it. I’ve always been passionate about the environment and it’s fantastic to be able to be part of this at Heathrow.”
He said he was particularly proud of his team and its efforts to ensure more electric car charging ports at the airport, as well as the success of acquiring the peatland.
“It’s an area I’ve worked in for many years in a variety of roles and now I’m at Heathrow trying to improve the aviation industry.
“I was very proud of the commitment we made to be the first carbon-neutral airport by 2050 and am proud to be leading in the team in our efforts to do that.”
https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/heathrow-airport-reading-dad-gets-20790311
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The Terra Carta initiative:
Heir to the throne touts ‘comprehensive roadmap’ for sustainable recovery to 2030 backed by Unilever, BP, BlackRock, Heathrow Airport, and others
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/prince-charles-terra-carta-b825281.html
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Heathrow carbon footprint report
This document sets out the carbon emissions of Heathrow airport, only including planes below 3,000 feet.
The emissions of the airport itself, even including vehicles etc, came to around 1MtCO2 in 2018. The carbon emissions from the flights using Heathrow were about 19MtCO2.
See original table on P1 of the link above.
With the 3rd runway that Matt Gorman has been actively promoting for many years, the emissions would be greatly higher.
See also https://www.airportwatch.org.uk/2019/08/key-facts-heathrow-carbon/ for more numbers on the amount of carbon a 3rd runway could generate.
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