Behind Dallas-Fort Worth’s Grand Goals to Be the Greenest Airport on the Planet

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is hoping to become a global model for a modern-day green airport. Through continual search to implement environmentally sustainable measures and inching closer to a net-zero carbon footprint goal by 2030, the airport looks to realize $45 million in savings and cost avoidance over 15 years, said Robert Horton, the airport's vice president of environmental affairs and sustainability. The path to sustainability for one of the nation's biggest airports, which sits on 18,000 acres, came about 20 years ago with the discovery by the Environmental Protection Agency that the North Texas region and the airport's air quality were unhealthy, Horton said. And as the airport began finding ways to reduce emissions, its savings increased. "Over the period when we were reducing emissions, we noticed that a lot of the strategies that we employed not only reduced our emissions, but reduced our costs," said Horton. "For example, things like consolidating o