Fully solar-powered, Cochin airport leaves Anand Mahindra impressed. See tweet

Businessman Anand Mahindra, who is often known for sharing interesting and trending aspects from his official Twitter handle, on Saturday praised the Cochin international airport for its design, cleanliness, efficiency, and renewable energy consumption. The chairman of the Mahindra Group, who was in Kerala's Kochi for a group conference, said that the airport serving the city should be a model for all other airports.

The Mumbai-based business conglomerate was left impressed by the fact that the Cochin airport was designed using local architectural motifs, and that not only it is the first private airport in India, but also the first-of-its-kind in the entire world to be fully powered by solar energy. Mahindra also found the airport in Kerala to be quite compact, clean, and efficient, according to the tweet from his handle.

“Leaving Kochi after a rewarding ⁦group conference. The airport⁩ is compact, designed using local architectural motifs & is clean & efficient. The 1st private airport in the country, the 1st in the world to be fully solar-powered. This is a model for ALL airports,” tweeted Anand Mahindra

Notably, the Cochin international airport, situated about 25 kilometres away from the city centre, was the first-of-its-kind in India to be developed using a public-private partnership (PPP) model, which uses funds accumulated from nearly 10,000 non-resident Indians hailing from 30 countries. In addition to being the busiest and largest airport in India, the Cochin airport is also the fourth-busiest airport (in terms of international traffic) in the entire country.

The Cochin airport became fully powered by solar energy back in 2015 after it started drawing power from a dedicated solar plant – the 15 megawatts (MW) photovoltaic power station built by the Cochin International Airport Limited. The solar plant operates on 46,150 photovoltaic panels, which are capable of generating 50,000 units of electricity daily. The airport even ambitiously plans to double this solar production within the next two years. The entrepreneurial vision won the airport in 2018 the much-coveted 'Champion of the Earth' award, which is the highest environmental honour granted by the United Nations.