June 2026 - Pink strategy

Airports and climate: adaptation becomes a business continuity challenge

12 Jun 2026 | CLIMATE RISKS

An aircraft unable to take off due to extreme heat. A runway rendered unusable after a heavy rainfall event. Infrastructure weakened by more frequent and intense storms.

For a long time, climate challenges in the aviation sector were primarily addressed through the lens of decarbonisation. Today, however, another issue has become unavoidable: the ability of airport infrastructure to remain operational within an increasingly volatile climate context.

The consequences of climate change no longer concern just the environment. They directly impact operations, safety, infrastructure, workers, travelers, and ultimately, the economic performance of airport hubs.

What climate risks do airports face?

Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense. Beyond causing discomfort for passengers and on-site teams, these extreme temperatures also affect materials and aircraft operational performance. Some aircraft require longer takeoff distances, consume more fuel, or demand a reorganization of flight schedules to avoid peak heat periods.

Conversely, extreme cold snaps also continue to represent a major operational challenge, particularly through aircraft de-icing requirements and the additional constraints they place on operations.

Shifting precipitation patterns are also becoming an increasingly structuring challenge. Extreme rainfall can flood runways and severely disrupt activity. Meanwhile, storms and high winds weaken critical infrastructure, such as control towers or sensitive technical equipment.

Finally, airports located in coastal areas must integrate the risks associated with rising sea levels and marine submersion events.

These hazards have direct consequences for operators: delays, flight cancellations, temporary business interruptions, unforeseen repairs, urgent mobilization of skills, or accelerated investment in new equipment can quickly generate significant financial losses.

But beyond the immediate economic impact, the core issue is business continuity.

Adaptation and resilience assume strategic importance

Adaptation involves evolving infrastructure and operating models to anticipate the effects of climate change.
Resilience refers to a system’s ability to maintain its essential functions despite the occurrence of an extreme event.

These two approaches are closely linked. Adapting infrastructure without strengthening its resilience severely limits its long-term effectiveness. Conversely, it is difficult to talk about resilience without integrating a forward-looking vision of future climate trends.

For airports, this now means anticipating scenarios that would have seemed exceptional just a few years ago.

The foundation: vulnerability analysis & stress testing

Before defining solutions, one indispensable step remains: climate risk and vulnerability analysis. This process relies on a deep understanding of the local territory, infrastructure, and operations. It requires studying past climate events, the responses provided, existing points of fragility, and future climate projections.

The objective is to identify critical assets, assess exposure levels, and measure potential impacts on operations.

This analysis must also involve all stakeholders. The challenges do not just concern governance or technical departments; operational teams, who experience these situations on the ground, play an essential role in identifying real vulnerabilities.

Stress-testing exercises then allow operators to go further by simulating extreme scenarios:

What happens when multiple hazards occur simultaneously?
At what point can activity no longer be maintained under acceptable conditions?
What are the critical thresholds?

These approaches make it possible to build coherent, prioritized adaptation strategies.

What are the adaptation solutions?

Some solutions are technological, such as upgrading drainage systems, reinforcing infrastructure, or evolving technical equipment. Others rely on nature-based solutions, such as airports’ areas greening or integrated stormwater management to better absorb heavy rainfall events.

The challenge lies in identifying the most relevant solutions considering operational constraints, costs, risk levels, and business continuity objectives.

This reflection must also be conducted across the entire airport ecosystem. An airport relies on a vast number of critical interfaces: power grids, IT systems, public transport, water management, waste treatment, and logistical access. The vulnerability of just one of these links can impact the operations of the entire hub.

For several years, industry players have been accelerating their integration of these issues. The increasing intensity of climate hazards, financial losses already observed, and European regulatory changes are strongly driving this momentum.

While not all airports currently share the same level of maturity, a clear reality is emerging: climate is becoming a fully-fledged operational parameter.

How can PINK Strategy guide you?

PINK Strategy team supports stakeholders in analyzing their climate vulnerabilities and defining adaptation and resilience strategies that balance business continuity, economic performance, and environmental challenges.

Tomorrow, an infrastructure’s capacity to withstand climate hazards will be just as strategic as its ability to ensure daily operations.

LCA of a storage project: How to assess its environmental benefits?

4 Jun 2026 | LCA

Energy storage has become an essential pillar of our energy transition and provides a solution to the challenge posed by the intermittency of renewable energy. However, assessing the carbon footprint of a storage facility over its entire life cycle (whether it is stand-alone, coupled with a power generation plant, or used for self-consumption) proves to be a real challenge. How can we demonstrate that an asset that does not produce energy (and even loses some) can be environmentally friendly?

This is one of the main topics within energy storage. If we focus solely on the manufacturing of the system (lithium-ion cells for batteries, for instance) and its installation, the carbon footprint is inherently positive (meaning it emits greenhouse gases – GHG). Yet, if the project is properly scaled and intelligently managed, the environmental benefits over its entire lifespan more than offset this initial footprint.

The challenge for project developers is therefore to evaluate this “carbon savings” through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of their project. To do this, we must look beyond the battery itself and focus on what it helps avoid. Let’s explore how to assess and highlight the carbon footprint of your installations.

Assessing avoided emissions

Once the facility’s carbon impact has been calculated, we can quantify its avoided emissions. Be careful: this does not mean mathematically subtracting these emissions from the project’s carbon footprint to display an artificially zero footprint. The battery will always have its own impact. The correct approach consists instead in comparing our project to a “reference scenario” (what would happen on the grid if this project did not exist?). It is through this comparison that we can demonstrate the overall environmental benefit of the project.

Indeed, the most common mistake when assessing the environmental impact of a storage project is to omit its use phase. A battery is a flexibility asset: its purpose is not to generate electricity, but to shift its use in time relative to when it was produced. It is through this role that GHG emissions can be avoided.

The idea is simple: how much CO2e has the project prevented from being released into the atmosphere through its operation? To calculate and highlight this, it is essential to understand the environment and the usage scenario of the installation. Let’s have a look at the following two examples, which are common setups for storage facilities:

Scenario 1: Integration with a solar photovoltaic plant: the hunt for curtailment
Let’s imagine that our project involves a battery integrated with a solar photovoltaic plant. During production peaks, the grid is sometimes unable to absorb all the electricity generated by the facility. National or even European demand may be lower than production. In such cases the plant’s electricity output must then be limited to avoid negative prices (where the producer has to pay to produce). The photovoltaic installation will then curtail (cap) its production, leading to a loss of renewable electricity.

When these situations occur on a facility coupled with a storage solution, the system will store this surplus electricity that would otherwise not have been produced. By feeding it back into the grid in the evening, when demand is higher, it injects 100% renewable electricity at a time when thermal power plants might have been fired up to meet demand. The environmental benefit here is direct: we maximize the production of renewable electricity that would otherwise have been wasted while limiting the activation of polluting thermal plants.

Scenario 2: A grid-connected battery (Stand-alone)

If the battery is simply connected to the national power grid for trading (buying/selling), the logic is different but equally valuable. And this is where the excellent news comes in: the economic optimum is (almost always) aligned with the environmental optimum. In the energy market, electricity is cheapest (or even negatively priced) when it is abundant, that is, when wind turbines and solar panels are producing. Conversely, it is expensive in the evening, during peak consumption hours, because the grid must turn on backup thermal (gas) plants to supply the electricity needed to meet demand.

By charging at low cost, the battery stores electricity that is very often produced by renewables and has a very low carbon intensity. By discharging at a higher price, it prevents the grid from starting up thermal plants that run on fossil gas. The emissions avoided by the project therefore correspond to the difference between the emissions of the avoided fossil source and the low emissions of the stored renewable energy.

By comparing the project’s avoided emissions to its net emissions, we can determine if the facility is virtuous from a carbon point of view. Indeed, if the emissions avoided by the project are greater than the emissions generated over its life cycle, then the project can be considered environmentally beneficial.

Different scenarios: The importance of time granularity

We have seen that to highlight the carbon benefit of a storage project, we must look at its avoided emissions. To account for these, using an annual average of the French grid’s carbon intensity (around 31 gCO2e/kWh in 2025 according to Electricity Maps) to calculate a project’s carbon impact doesn’t really make sense. Because electricity generation sources and the grid’s carbon intensity vary constantly, the environmental footprint of a storage project plays out on a much finer time scale!

Thus, to model avoided emissions relevantly, the project analysis must be performed using the finest possible time granularity (hourly, or even down to the quarter-hour or minute). This is the only way to accurately overlay the battery’s charge/discharge curve with the national grid’s carbon intensity curve. Above a certain level of precision, the analysis of avoided emissions loses its meaning.

This methodology is supported by french leading institutions like ADEME. All scenarios (from ADEME, RTE, CRE, etc.) show that the massive deployment of renewables in France will require tens of gigawatts of flexibility (including storage projects), and that their environmental assessment must absolutely take into account this temporal dynamic of the electricity mix.

Specific constraints: Why is every project unique?

If we insist on precise modeling of the operating scenario, it is because each project is tied to its own specific industrial and economic context. The valuation of a project’s environmental footprint must therefore reflect its specific context.

Take the example of a company that couples its solar panels, its battery, and the charging stations (EVSE) for its electric vehicle fleet. The energy management system (EMS) algorithm will not just seek the financial optimum on the grid. It will have to respect an operational constraint: “The vehicles plugged into the charging stations must absolutely be recharged to 80% before 5:00 PM for the employees’ end of the day.” This constraint will force the battery to discharge at a specific time to power the cars, thereby altering its natural charging profile. In return, the system could use compatible vehicles (V2G – Vehicle-to-Grid) as additional storage capacity! This is exactly why the carbon footprint of every storage project is unique. There is no universal magic formula: the balance depends on geographic location, market prices, the storage technology used and its capacity, and above all, local usage constraints and the charge/discharge and integration scenario.

Modeling for better valuation

Highlighting the environmental gain of a storage system is a complex exercise, but one with real value. Whether it is to meet your CSR obligations, secure green financing, or simply validate the relevance of your investment, performing a Life Cycle Assessment of your storage project makes perfect sense. While batteries are often criticized, you must be able to prove that the impact of their manufacturing and installation will be fully offset by the emissions avoided over their lifespan.

Do you have a storage project and want to conduct a detailed analysis of its operational cycle and environmental impact (emissions avoided, hourly modeling, optimization of usage)?