Heathrow can only expand if airlines pay to cut emissions
The Climate Change Committee said expansion could only fit the UK’s climate targets if the aviation industry was required to reach zero emissions by 2050.
Heathrow Airport cannot be expanded within the UK’s climate commitments under current policies, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has advised the government.
Nigel Topping, who chairs the independent statutory body, said: “Heathrow expansion is not currently compatible with the UK’s Net Zero target.”
Topping added: “Government needs to ensure that the aviation industry takes responsibility for the emissions it creates and bears the costs of decarbonisation. Those conditions do not exist today.”
The government had asked the committee to advise on its draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement, and the advice, published on 16 September, said expansion could only be consistent with the UK’s carbon budgets if ministers required the aviation industry to reach zero emissions by 2050, through a mix of cutting its own emissions and paying for engineered removals.
The advice sets out a Net Zero pathway for aviation built on the ‘polluter pays’ principle, covering every source of UK aviation emissions.
In that pathway, engineered removals would account for 36% of the emissions reduction by 2050.
Slower growth in demand for flights would contribute a further 24% of the reduction.
Efficiency improvements and sustainable aviation fuel would each account for 20%, with the industry paying for the fuel and the removals.
Aviation emissions had more than doubled since 1990, while emissions across the UK economy as a whole had halved, with Heathrow responsible for around half of the aviation industry’s total, the report said.
The industry should face the full costs of decarbonisation no later than 2050, the report added, and the commercial risks of expansion “should sit with investors, not consumers”.
Sustainable aviation fuel and engineered removals are “proven to be technically viable”, the advice said, though how quickly they can be deployed at the scale required remains uncertain.
The government should prepare contingency policies to allow for delays, the report added.
The advice also said ministers should manage the risk to UK competitiveness and of aviation emissions simply moving overseas, through closer cooperation with the EU and continued action at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The climate test in the government’s draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement must also be strengthened to explicitly include the 2050 Net Zero target.
Half of people in England do not fly abroad in any given year, the CCC said, and the Citizens’ Panel for its Seventh Carbon Budget advice “strongly disapproved” of taxpayers funding the decarbonisation of aviation.
“Emissions from flying are projected to rise, even without Heathrow expansion, and the UK does not currently have a credible plan to bring them down,” Topping said.
