Runway Girl Network is pleased to provide an audio recording of our full interview with Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis.

The interview was conducted on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association’s World Sustainability Symposium in Coral Gables, Florida.

Known as one of the most sustainable and resilient airports in the world, Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) in western Pennsylvania is looking to double the size of its solar farm.

PIT’s current 8-acre farm with 9,390 solar panels is part of a three-year-old hybrid microgrid that also features an on-site natural gas power plant.

But with vast acreage at its disposal, the airport is about to expand with many more solar panels.

“We’ve got plenty of land. We sit on 8,800 acres at PIT, so we’ve got a lot of space,” Christina Cassotis, CEO of PIT operator Allegheny County Airport Authority, told RGN on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association’s World Sustainability Symposium in Coral Gables, Florida.

“It hasn’t been announced yet. It’s coming soon,” she revealed in reference to the solar farm expansion.

Sitting atop the massive Marcellus Shale natural gas reserve, PIT is naturally advantaged — beyond the expansive nature of its property.

By embracing a hybrid approach to its microgrid, inclusive of solar, the facility has been able to dramatically reduce carbon emissions and slash electricity costs in a region that is otherwise known for its coal-heavy grid.

“When I got there, they had just signed the lease with [natural gas company] CNX. So, when I took over that, that deal was already done. CNX had secured permission to extract natural gas on the property. And I think about a year after I got there, we started to see the results of that because we … get a royalty for that,” explained Cassotis.

“So, that has helped us with capital. It has helped us enormously to reinvest and that’s been really important for us. But we wanted to make sure that what we were doing is that we were investing not just financial resources, but investing these gas resources.”

With a keen focus on improving resiliency and sustainability, a decision was taken early on to adopt a hybrid approach.

“There was no way it was not going to be hybrid,” Cassotis said. “How do you send a message on sustainability and not have a renewable fuel source? So, to me it was non-negotiable; there was going to be a renewable resource for fuel that would power that microgrid in addition to the natural gas, because that’s the story we wanted to tell.”

She continued:

The story we’ve always wanted to tell is that it’s a pathway, it’s a series of steps; it’s not a leap into a cleaner, greener future. And so, what can we do to be more resilient? Number one, that was the first goal, but we weren’t going to do it at the expense of finance or the expense of the environment. So, once we realized we could attain resiliency and lower our carbon footprint and lower our energy costs, which of course directly impacts the airlines’ bottom line, then it was a no brainer.

And so why? So, let’s tell the whole story. The whole story is that airports can do more to be sustainable. And we had the land for solar, so it just made a whole lot of sense. Nobody’s putting wind turbines up in an airport.

The project is attracting interest from airlines and other airports alike.

“We are getting visits from folks to tour the microgrid… Southwest Airlines actually came up and said, ‘we want to understand this so we can talk to some of our other airport partners about it,'” she said.

“We had the city of Houston come in to look at it for the airport in Houston and we have a group coming over from Japan actually. It’s fascinating. And we’ve had other airports ask us about it and we just published a white paper. We’re getting interest but we haven’t seen anybody else do a microgrid yet.”

Though PIT is presently in the midst of a major transformation — one that aims to enhance the passenger experience for all travelers, including those with mobility challenges — it is innovating in other eco-focused ways as the wider aviation industry works to achieve Net Zero by 2050.

To that end, PIT in May announced it is working with CNX and KeyState Energy to accelerate regional and national hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) developments, including with a proposed facility that would help catalyze hydrogen and SAF at scale — with the anticipation that hydrogen-powered aircraft (and indeed other use cases for hydrogen) are forthcoming, and in acknowledgment of the massive role that SAF will play in helping industry meet its sustainability targets.

“We actually worked with a DOE-patented scientist in Pittsburgh to test how to create distributed hydrogen in a cost effective manner,” Cassotis told RGN in Florida. “We actually did a one-year study with him and we’re looking for the funding. We’ve talked to everybody from DOE to some of the airlines’ venture funds about building the prototype, which would be about the size of the back of an 18-wheeler as opposed to a huge hydrogen hub.

“But how do you create distributed hydrogen in a cost effective manner? Yeah, we see ourselves as a hydrogen hub in ourselves. We have use cases for it, not just us, but our partners do, and we want to be at the forefront of that as well.”

The Allegheny County Airport Authority chief and fellow staffers attended the IATA World Sustainability Symposium as they’re on the lookout for who in the ecosystem is making moves.

“Who’s thinking differently than we are? How do we learn? What else are we missing? How can we connect with folks who have the same ideas that we do or the same sort of value system around ‘let’s make this better’. I feel strongly that as an industry globally, we need to earn our right to grow,” she said.

“And I am an aviation aficionado. My dad was a Pan Am pilot. I care about this industry and I don’t want it hammered with the misperception that we’re not doing anything.”

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Featured image credited to istock.com/bgwalker