Energy Efficiency in the 21st Century: E-mobility at the Airports: Opportunities and Barriers

The 2010 European Strategy on facilitating the introduction of more environmentally friendly and efficient vehicles addresses the necessity to prevent the road transportation pollution. This Strategy discusses the electric vehicle re-introduction that originated several years ago as one of the solutions. This thesis investigated the drivers and barriers of integrating electric vehicles into the Budapest Airport operations in order to reduce GHG emissions produced by the transportation sector and to generate savings. The research question investigated whether the EV technology could satisfy those goals. The key objective of this study was to facilitate the exchange of experiences between the Frankfurt, Vienna and Budapest International Airports. The two successful case study airports of Frankfurt and Vienna provided crucial information on the drivers and barriers associated with the EV integration into their daily work. The main barriers were the high investment cost of the vehicle and battery, lack of major governmental incentives to purchase the EVs and not standardized expensive infrastructure.