Cochin International Airport Switched On a 12 MW Solar Plant in 2015 to Cover Its Own Power Use and Won the UN's Champions of the Earth Award in 2018

On 18 August 2015 Kerala’s Chief Minister Oommen Chandy inaugurated a 12 MW solar plant beside Cochin International Airport, built so the airport could meet its own demand of about 48,000 units (kilowatt-hours) of electricity a day. UNEP, the UN Environment Programme, describes the airport as the world’s first fully solar-powered airport, and on 26 September 2018 it presented the airport company’s managing director, V.J. Kurian, with the Champions of the Earth award in the Entrepreneurial Vision category. Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) reported 50 MWp of solar capacity in March 2022, generating about 2 lakh (200,000) units a day against a daily use of 1.6 lakh. MWp, megawatt-peak, is the rating a panel earns under standard test conditions.

An airport that private and overseas money built

Cochin International Airport, at Nedumbassery near Kochi, opened in 1999. NITI Aayog, the government’s policy body, calls Kochi the first greenfield airport in India with private participation and says the company was incorporated in 1994 with the Government of Kerala, financial institutions, airport service providers and foreign countries as shareholders. NITI Aayog adds that the financing combined government funding, interest-free loans and donations from non-resident Indians. Forbes India’s 2018 profile says it was the first Indian airport built on the public-private partnership model. NITI Aayog lists Hyderabad and Bengaluru, both completed in 2008, as the next airports built this way. For the newest one, near Mumbai, see Navi Mumbai Airport and India’s airport boom.

The power bill that started it

CIAL has given two accounts of the trigger, both in its own words. Its UNEP story says the price of power jumped from 6 to 10 cents per unit in 2012. The best-practice entry that the Government of Kerala filed with the Department of Economic Affairs says the state electricity board raised the airport tariff from Rs 4 to Rs 7 a unit, which lifted the annual bill from Rs 7 crore to Rs 12 crore. Both accounts lead to the same decision: generate at the airport, where there was vacant land, roofs and a 110 kV substation connected to the state grid.

CIAL began with a 100 kW rooftop plant on the arrival terminal in early 2013. Down To Earth gives March 2013 and Forbes India quotes Kurian dating the pilot to February 2013. Per the Kerala filing, the trial produced an average of 400 units a day without problems, which gave the company confidence to build at megawatt scale. CIAL Infrastructures, the airport company’s wholly owned subsidiary, lists a 1 MWp plant at the airport museum and hangar commissioned in November 2013.

What the 2015 plant was and what it cost

Beside the cargo terminal, the 12 MW plant went up on 45 acres that had earlier been allotted to a cargo-handling unit, according to Forbes India. Down To Earth gives the area as 18 hectares, which is about the same size. Bosch, the German company, won the tender, and Airport Technology reported on 13 August 2015 that Bosch installed the plant within six months. It has 46,150 panels of 265 watts each and inverters of 1 MW capacity.

Reports differ on the price: Down To Earth gives Rs 65 crore and Forbes India says Bosch’s winning bid was Rs 62 crore (Airport Technology gives Rs 620 million, the same figure). CIAL’s own estimate was that the plant would make 18 million units a year, roughly 50,000 units a day, and avoid more than 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over 25 years, according to the Down To Earth report of a CIAL press release. A different CIAL figure of 1.75 lakh tonnes over 25 years appears in Airport Technology and Gulf News, so the avoided-emissions estimate varies by report.

By 2018 the plant was meeting the target. Kurian told Gulf News in September 2018 that the airport produced about 52,000 units a day and used about 48,000.

How the grid arrangement works

There are no batteries. Down To Earth describes it as grid-connected, with a power-banking arrangement under which CIAL gives the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) the power it generates in a day and takes it back when needed. Kurian told Gulf News the airport draws grid power at night, when the panels are idle. This banking ran into early difficulties, the Kerala filing says: the state utility at first billed the airport for total imports without netting off the excess it had exported in daytime. Later, the state regulator’s Renewable Energy Regulations allowed banking for megawatt-scale solar producers and settled the question, the filing says.

So “fully solar-powered” here means that the airport’s annual generation matches or exceeds its annual use, not that every unit is consumed live from the panels. tuput did not find an independent audit of the claim. The description rests on CIAL’s figures and on the UNEP story, which is written in the airport’s own voice.

From 12 MW to 50 MWp

CIAL Infrastructures lists the build-out by month of commissioning:

• August 2015: 12 MWp, and May 2016: 2.4 MWp, both next to the cargo terminal, which the company counts as a 14.4 MWp plant.
• March 2017: 3 MWp at the aircraft maintenance hangar and 2 MWp south of the runway, outside the operational area.
• July 2017: a 2.7 MWp carport in front of the international terminal. A 2.6 MWp carport at the domestic terminal and cargo car park followed in July 2019.
• September 2019: 7.2 MWp across four sites in the airport premises.
• January 2020: a 0.452 MWp floating plant on the water body of the airport golf course.
• March 2022: a 12 MWp plant at Ettukudukka near Payyannur, in Kannur district, dedicated by the Chief Minister on 6 March 2022.

UNEP’s story, again in CIAL’s words, adds panels over a two-kilometre canal and on terminal roofs and hangars, with solar plants at eight locations and 29.5 MW in total in September 2018, producing 120,000 units a day. A 4.5 MW run-of-the-river hydro plant at Arippara in Kozhikode district was commissioned on 13 October 2021 and, per CIAL Infrastructures, makes 13 million units a year in the June to November monsoon season.

At Payyannur, the plant was built on sloping land without levelling it. CIAL Infrastructures says this “terrain based” layout needs about 2.75 acres per MW against 3.75 acres on flat ground and fits roughly 35 per cent more panels. Business Standard, quoting the CIAL managing director on 27 February 2022, reported that the company’s plants made about 2 lakh units a day against 1.6 lakh used at the airport, which CIAL calls a step from power-neutral to power-positive. According to the Kerala filing, the plants had produced about 250 million units worth Rs 170 crore as of its March 2023 filing and avoided more than 160,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and puts the total outlay for 2013 to 2020 at Rs 265 crore. The filing carries a Government of Kerala disclaimer that responsibility for its content rests with the state.

The 2018 United Nations award

UNEP announced the award in late July 2018. The News Minute quoted a letter from Erik Solheim, then UNEP’s executive director, to Kurian calling it the UN’s highest environmental accolade and saying it reflected his leadership in the use of sustainable energy. Kurian received it at a ceremony in New York on the margins of the 73rd UN General Assembly on 26 September 2018, from a UNEP official, as New Indian Express reported. UNEP’s statement said the airport was “proof positive that green business is good business.”

Floods had closed the airport in August 2018. ThePrint put the closure at 14 days after the Periyar river overflowed, with reopening due on 29 August. In New York, Kurian dedicated the award to the people of Kerala, who had just lived through the worst monsoon flooding since 1924, he said. UNEP’s story gives the airport’s traffic in the previous year as 10 million passengers, 5.5 million of them international. For 2025-26, CIAL reported 1,14,42,583 passengers (about 11.44 million), of whom 54,01,939 were international, the fourth straight year above 10 million, according to BizzBuzz’s account of the airport’s statement of 7 May 2026.

Airports Council International (ACI) Asia-Pacific and Middle East gave CIAL a Silver award in its 2025 Green Airports Recognition, in the 6 to 15 million passenger category, for the Payyannur plant. ACI said 39 submissions produced 12 awards, presented on 16 April 2025 in New Delhi. The 2026 round gave CIAL Gold in the 5 to 15 million category, according to the Zawya report of the awards in Bangkok on 13 May 2026, whose theme was climate change adaptation.

Farming between the panels

UNEP’s 2018 story mentions a solar farm at the airport where organic vegetables are grown for nearby markets and staff. Forbes India reported in 2018 that over 80 tonnes were grown in a year, planted mostly between the panels, and that water used to clean the panels irrigated the crops and kept dust down. By December 2021 CIAL said it had put 20 acres of its 45-acre cargo-terminal plant under what it calls agrivoltaic farming, growing yam, drumstick, turmeric, cabbage and chillies, according to Saur Energy. The company describes it as the largest such project in the country.

What other Indian airports have done since

In the UNEP story, CIAL says the Government of India decided after it went solar to encourage all airports to source at least 2 MW from solar. The national picture, from solar parks to rooftops, is in India’s solar capacity: the numbers and PM Surya Ghar. The Airports Authority of India’s 2023 green airports mission document says AAI-managed airports had about 40 MWp of solar at 38 airports in March 2022 and 54.3 MWp by December 2022, with a target of 100 MWp by December 2024, and that its Kolkata airport has 17 MWp. At ACI’s 2025 awards, AAI’s 8 MW plant at Hubballi Airport took Platinum in the category for airports under 6 million passengers.