UK’s biggest airport expansion hits a green wall
Key Points
- CCC says no credible pathway for Heathrow expansion under current climate policies
- Expansion only possible if aviation industry reaches zero emissions by 2050
- Industry, not taxpayers, must pay for sustainable fuel and carbon removals
- Return flights to Alicante and New York could rise £150 and £400 by 2050
- Environmental Audit Committee chair warns of legal challenges without a rethink
Environmental Audit Committee chair Toby Perkins has told the government to take seriously the Climate Change Committee’s advice that a third runway at Heathrow is not currently compatible with the UK’s climate commitments.
“Today the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has given clear advice to the government that expanding Heathrow airport is not currently compatible with the UK’s climate commitments,” said Toby Perkins, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee.
Perkins said the findings closely echoed his committee’s own conclusion last year that expanding airports without safeguards for the environment could put net zero targets in jeopardy.
“If the government wants to pursue airport expansion, it must ensure a more ambitious and convincing approach to decarbonising the heavily polluting aviation industry,” he said.
“Without that, it risks putting our net zero targets in serious peril and becoming stuck in a quagmire of legal challenges,” he added.
The Climate Change Committee published its advice on Wednesday (16 September) after the Department for Transport asked it to assess the draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement.
The committee said there is no credible pathway for Heathrow expansion within the UK’s carbon budgets and 2050 net zero target under current policies.
It said expansion could only go ahead if ministers imposed a robust set of policies requiring the aviation industry to reach zero emissions by 2050, through a mix of direct emissions cuts and the purchase of engineered carbon removals.
The CCC’s net zero aviation pathway relies on engineered removals for 36% of the reduction, lower demand growth for 24%, efficiency gains for 20% and sustainable aviation fuel for 20%.
The committee said the aviation industry, rather than taxpayers, should pay for sustainable aviation fuel and carbon removals, and that this cost would pass into ticket prices.
Its modelling shows a return flight from London to Alicante costing around £150 more by 2050, and a return to New York around £400 more in 2024 prices.
Aviation emissions have more than doubled since 1990 while emissions across the UK economy as a whole have halved, the committee said.
Heathrow currently accounts for around half of the aviation industry’s emissions.
The CCC also said the climate test in the draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement must be strengthened to explicitly include the UK’s 2050 net zero target, and that commercial risk from expansion should sit with investors rather than the public.
It noted that half of people in England do not fly abroad in any given year, and that a citizens’ panel convened for its Seventh Carbon Budget advice strongly disapproved of taxpayers funding aviation decarbonisation.
The draft policy statement remains subject to parliamentary scrutiny, with any third runway scheme then needing to pass a separate development consent process.
