BOSTON — Officials at Boston Logan International Airport have announced a broad multimillion-dollar plan to make the airport, which is almost surrounded by water, more environmentally sustainable and resilient in the face of climate change.
The plan calls for investment in measures like flood doors and the relocation of generators to higher floors to make the facility better able to withstand higher sea levels and increased storm surges. It was released last month by the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates the airport.
“Over time, there’s reason to believe that we would experience some kind of a storm system that would create that kind of flooding,” said Thomas P. Glynn, the chief executive of Massport, who said $9 million had been budgeted to make a quarter of the airport’s “critical assets” more resilient in the next five years. The report says the rest of those assets should be made more resilient over the next 10 years.
The plan also sets efficiency targets for Massport’s operations at the airport, like cutting energy consumption by a quarter by 2020, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the same year. The plan curbs water usage, increases composting and seeks to reduce waste generated per passenger by 2 percent a year through 2030.
Logan is one of 44 airports that have received grants from the Federal Aviation Administration to create these plans to manage sustainability. Airport officials here and other experts say the Boston plan is among the first to incorporate resiliency planning, although the F.A.A. was unable to immediately confirm whether this was the case.
“There’s only a handful of airports that have had pretty comprehensive strategies, though more are starting to look at it,” said Katherine Preston, the senior director of environmental affairs for the North American arm of Airports Council International.
The issue of airports’ exposure to climate-related risks has drawn attention in recent years, especially after Hurricane Sandy flooded New York City’s airports. According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, 13 of the country’s 47 largest airports, including New York’s John F. Kennedy and La Guardia Airports, have one or more runways that are vulnerable to moderate or high storm surges.
A growing number of airports have begun to address the risks associated with climate change. The sustainable management plan developed for Newark Liberty International Airport, published in October 2012, called for officials to develop a risk assessment and a “climate change adaptation action plan” by the end of this year.
Other airports have examined the issue outside the scope of sustainability reports. According to a federally funded study by the Airport Cooperative Research Program, those airports include Oakland International in California, where planners are factoring sea level rise into their design changes, and the Jacksonville, Fla., and San Diego airports. Denver’s climate adaptation plan, published last year, found that city’s airport was also vulnerable to climate change.
“They are considering things like sea level rise, increasing temperatures, increasing storm events as they plan for the future,” said Katy Maher, a fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. She added, “It seems like Boston and New York have kind of taken the first steps of really taking action.”
Some environmental advocates in Massachusetts said the Massport plan lacked specifics, especially on how it plans to meet its sustainability targets. “It’s not as detailed as I would have liked to have seen,” said Greg Cunningham, the director of the clean energy and climate change program at the Conservation Law Foundation, who added that San Francisco International Airport had set more ambitious emissions goals even while it served more passengers.