The third runway at Heathrow should not be approved unless the aviation industry commits to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, project advisers have said.
A report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent body established under 2008’s Climate Change Act, stated that the expansion would only be permissible if airlines commit to greener fuel.
The CCC laid out ways that the industry could reduce emissions by 2050, such as through the government requiring the industry to pay the costs of decarbonisation and investing in sustainable aviation fuel.
The group also recommended engineered removal machines, which capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it permanently.
“This is the only way that the proposed Heathrow expansion could be considered consistent with the UK’s carbon budgets and net zero,” the report said.
However, the report notes that if the industry pays for sustainable aviation fuels and removal of emissions, this will likely be passed on to ticket prices.
It estimates that ticket prices could increase by around £150 for a return trip to Alicante and £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050, around six to nine pence per mile, similar to fuel duty on petrol and diesel today.
The report also points out that while sustainable aviation fuel and engineered removals are viable, it is uncertain if they can be deployed on a mass scale within the net zero timeline.
While the government has made investment plans in this area, further action would need to be taken to use them in the long term.
The CCC says that emissions from aviation have more than doubled since 1990, while industries that make up the rest of the economy have halved theirs.
Even if the third runway did not go ahead, the advisers say that under the current policies, emissions would not fall at all by 2050. Heathrow is currently responsible for around half of aviation emissions in Britain.
It predicts the expansion would only make it harder for the UK to meet its climate targets and forecasts that the full impact of the expansion would account for 6.9 per cent of the country’s remaining carbon emissions by 2050.
A Heathrow spokesperson says that its expansion cannot be a choice between economic growth and meeting the UK’s net zero targets – “it must deliver both”.
“The CCC’s assessment does not change this and acknowledges that the key solutions exist today,” they continued.
“We will continue working with government and partners across the aviation sector to ramp up today’s proven technologies, while examining options for how the billions of pounds passengers already pay in carbon taxes can be used to support this.
“Given the right policies, a growing aviation sector can be empowered to deliver the huge economic and social value that air travel brings, while increasing pace of delivery of the solutions needed to accelerate aviation’s decarbonisation.”
The DfT said that “any expansion proposal would need to align with our net zero targets”.
“We're investing £219 million in sustainable aviation fuel production and a further £43 million in cleaner technologies to support greener aviation, while expansion could deliver around £40 billion to the economy and support up to 60,000 local jobs.
“We will carefully consider CCC’s advice along with all responses received to the Heathrow expansion consultation.”
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