It Adds Up: what decarbonized mobility looks like once it’s running

Between 2013 and 2025, Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airports cut its direct operational emissions (Scopes 1 and 2) by 94 percent, reaching net zero on its direct footprint in 2025 - a year ahead of schedule. The reduction did not rely on unproven technologies; it came from an exhaustive inventory of every emitting asset on the platform: complete LED retrofitting, Energy Management system certified ISO 50001, biomass and cogenerated heat recovery replacing fossil fuel heating, an electrified ground fleet, and an on-site 23 MWp solar canopy, providing self-consumption and injection into the grid, paired with certified renewable grid supply.

What happens after direct emissions bottom out is the critical test. Lyon-Saint Exupéry is one of only a handful of international airports certified at Level 5 under ACI’s Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA)—a standard introduced at COP28. Level 5 requires operators to cut direct operational emissions by at least 90 percent, leaving a residual ceiling capped below 500 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent per year.

Under these rules, traditional avoided-deforestation offsets are banned; residual emissions must be sequestered through verified physical removals subject to annual GHG Protocol third-party audits. Lyon-Saint Exupéry’s residual footprint is absorbed by natural carbon sink projects located within its catchment area. For example, Lyon-Saint-Exupéry Airport has funded the restoration of a dedicated 3.6-hectare area of woodland, in partnership  with the French National Forestry Office (ONF) and local authorities.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, ground operations (taxiing and auxiliary power while at stands) generate up to 30 percent of aircrafts’ platform-specific emissions. One efficient way to reduce those emissions is to enable aircrafts to switch off their APU (Auxiliary Power Unit - the small kerosene turbines in the tail that keep cockpit avionics and cabin climate control) while on the ground, by providing them with ground power unit (GPU) and pre-conditioned air (PCA).

In VINCI Airports, deployment of such systems is already well advanced : across our network 76% of the contact stands are equipped with electrical GPUs and the number of PCA will increase sixfold by 2030. In Nantes Airport, thermal sensors mounted on the apron, developed by the startup Waltr have been tried to track and monitor the heat and noise signatures of the APUs of parked aircrafts. Systemic ground electrification and can cut those APU emissions by up to 50 percent globally.

VINCI Airports has been working with Estuaire for several years to calculate emissions during the landing and take-off (LTO) cycle with a high degree of accuracy. Using data from aircraft transponders picked up by ADS-B antennas, combined with available operational data, VINCI Airports is able to calculate the CO₂ emissions of each aircraft during the approach, landing and taxiing phases, as well as during take-off.

That discipline produces metrics that resist corporate smoothing. Across more than 8,200 kilometers of motorways operated in the VINCI Concessions network, 74 percent of lighting has been converted to dynamic LED systems.

On the Olympia Odos highway between Athens, Corinth, and Patras in Greece, lighting was rebuilt around real-time traffic counters, weather stations, optical sensors, and predictive algorithms. Luminaires adjust dynamically to vehicle density and visibility rather than fixed timers.

The highway now draws less than a quarter of the grid electricity it consumed in 2020, avoiding approximately 5,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually. Remaining power demand is covered by a dedicated 10 MWp on-site solar plant, financed and built in under two years for over €10 million.

Coverage determines whether infrastructure changes driver behavior. A single public charging station serves as a local asset, but driver adoption depends on network reliability across an entire itinerary.

In 2025, one in four new passenger cars sold globally was electric. While public charging points grew 40 percent in a single year to exceed 4 million units worldwide, DC fast chargers still represent only 20 percent of the global network. In France, 48 percent of EV owners now use their electric vehicles for long-distance weekend and holiday travel, demonstrating that continuous motorway charging infrastructure has largely removed the range barrier.

Across the VINCI Autoroutes network in France, charging hubs are deployed across 100 percent of service areas - roughly 56 charging points every 100 kilometers - with 2,495 charging points live. Over 90 percent deliver high-power fast charging, directly addressing the bottleneck identified by international agencies.

On-site power generation follows the same logic of physical deployment. VINCI Concessions operates over 144 MWp of installed photovoltaic capacity, against an potential of 1.6 GWp across its land holdings.

In Brazil, the 570-kilometer Entrevias highway concession covers 100 percent of its operational energy through dedicated solar installations.

In France, SunMind developed, built and will operate the Champlas solar power plant in Culhat for the next 30 years. Located on a former construction site along the A89 motorway operated by VINCI Autoroutes, the plant features 7,722 panels and an installed capacity of 4.8 MWp. It is expected to generate nearly 6,000 MWh of renewable electricity annually, equivalent to the consumption of around 1,500 households.

The most decisive accounting boundary in transport infrastructure is the line that separates direct operations from third-party use.

For an infrastructure concessionaire, direct operational emissions (Scopes 1 and 2) represent just 2 to 5 percent of the total greenhouse gases generated on its platforms. The remaining 95 to 98 percent sits in Scope 3: the fuel burned by commercial airliners on the runways, the diesel consumed by long-haul trucks on the motorways, and the energy used by ground-handling contractors inside the perimeter.

Cutting 94 percent of an airport’s direct emissions solves 5 percent of the platform's broader climate problem. The real lever sits in how the infrastructure alters the operational economics of the other 95 percent: whether an airline can plug into high-capacity electricity rather than burning jet fuel at the gate; whether a freight carrier can find high-power megawatt charging along a freight corridor; whether ground handlers are compelled and equipped to switch to electric service fleets.

Across its global portfolio of airports, motorways, and rail assets in 25 countries, VINCI Concessions recorded a 65 percent reduction in direct emissions in 2025 compared to its 2018 baseline. Having surpassed its original 2030 target of 51 percent two years ahead of schedule, the group raised its target to 79 percent, backed by an interim commitment across its EU airports and London Gatwick, and Edinburgh to cut direct emissions by 90 percent by 2030.

The real shift in scale will not come from what a concession operator burns to maintain its assets, but from what its physical network enables everyone else to avoid.

A motorway network equipped with ultra-fast charging does not primarily decarbonize the concessionaire’s balance sheet - it provides the physical conditions required for millions of independent drivers and hauliers to abandon fossil fuels.

That is the operational dividing line now emerging across global infrastructure: between operators that publish long-term roadmaps, and those building the physical capacity that allows others to decarbonize. The numbers add up because someone is measuring them on the ground, one meter at a time.