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Third Heathrow runway should only go ahead if airlines pay for cleaner flying, say advisers
Confirmed
In Short: Heathrow's expansion plans are facing significant climate hurdles, with the government's advisers stating that the third runway cannot be approved without altering current climate policies.
Heathrow's expansion plans are facing significant climate hurdles, with the government's advisers stating that the third runway cannot be approved without altering current climate policies. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has advised that expansion can still go ahead, but only if the aviation industry funds cleaner fuels and pays for carbon dioxide removal machines, which could increase the cost of flying by up to £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
Heathrow responded that expansion and climate goals are 'not a choice' and that it would deliver both. The £33 billion project would raise Heathrow's capacity to 150 million passengers a year, up from 85 million, and the Commons vote on the proposal is expected later this year.
What's confirmed
- Heathrow's expansion plans are facing significant climate hurdles, with the government's advisers stating that the third runway cannot be approved without altering current climate policies. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has advised that expansion can still go ahead, but only if the aviation industry funds cleaner fuels and pays for carbon dioxide removal machines, which could increase the cost of flying by up to £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
- Heathrow responded that expansion and climate goals are 'not a choice' and that it would deliver both. The £33 billion project would raise Heathrow's capacity to 150 million passengers a year, up from 85 million, and the Commons vote on the proposal is expected later this year.
What's still developing
- Making the industry pay could push up the cost of flying with a return trip to Alicante costing around £150 more by 2050, and a return to New York up £400 in today's prices, it said.
- "Our advice today is clear - Heathrow expansion is not currently compatible with the UK's Net Zero target," said Nigel Topping, the CCC chair.
- The CCC has said carbon-removal machines must be deployed to cut more than a third of the emissions by 2050.
- Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said carriers backed the government's target of net zero by 2050 but added that the transition "has to be affordable".
- Protestors against the planned Heathrow expansion demonstrate outside Parliament in early September Some researchers believe the committee's advice does not act as a barrier to Heathrow's expansion and will fail to achieve the reduction in planet-warming gases required.
- Dr Lois Pennington of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research told the BBC that because cleaner fuel and carbon removal were unlikely to arrive at the scale needed, the only reliable way to stay within the UK's carbon limits was to stop the expansion of flying - or even to reduce it.
- "We need to make sure that we are not flying more than we are now," she said.
- Last week, Chancellor John Healey said the Government had “given the go-ahead” to the proposal to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport, which will cost an estimated £33 billion, including £1.5 billion to move the M25, and increase the site’s capacity to 756,000 flights and 150 million passengers.