VINCI Airports will produce green electricity with new solar power plant

VINCI Airport‘s will launch a 14-hectre solar power plant across Lyon-Saint Exupéry airport as part of their pledge to cut back on the harmful emissions polluted by air travel. It will be one of the largest shaded power plants in France, covering a tremendous distance of 5,800 parking spaces, and will have a capacity of 20 MWHp to produce 24 GWh of green electricity annually (equivalent to an impressive 9,000 inhabitants). Production will be injected into the national grid to help supply neighbouring communities and will prevent nearly 1,600 tonnes of CO^2 1 from being polluted annually. 

The project has just been validated by the French Ministry of Ecological Transition as the winner of the latest call for tenders issued by the French Energy Regulation Commission. This step allows the launch of the construction work this Fall, for a commissioning in the summer of 2024.

The project has been awarded to a consortium comprising Neoen and SunMind (VINCI Concessions’ photovoltaic subsidiary), which will design, finance, build and operate the plant until 2047.

This large-scale project is part of VINCI Airports‘ ambition to produce renewable energy at its airports. Committed since 2016 to the development of their solar potential, VINCI Airports already has a capacity of more than 40 MWp with solar plants in operation at its airports in the UK, Portugal, Brazil or the Dominican Republic. VINCI Airports is aiming to exploit a potential exceeding one GWp.

Nicolas Notebaert, CEO of VINCI Concessions and President of VINCI Airports, declares: “airports are places of opportunity for photovoltaic production, which is why VINCI Airports has been committed to developing solar power plants for several years now. This allows us to decarbonise our own consumption, but also to contribute to the energy transition of the territories, by injecting the electricity we produce into the network, as we will soon do in Lyon”.

¹ Compared to an average of the electricity supplied to the French grid (current electricity mix).