The UK cannot both expand Heathrow Airport and meet its climate targets, new scientific report finds

Heathrow Airport

Progress on production of sustainable aviation fuels and carbon removals too slow to enable expansion within the required timeframe

The proposal to build a third runway at Heathrow is incompatible with the UK’s climate targets, according to a new report by the Tyndall Centre in Manchester.

There is no “credible scenario” in which expansion could go ahead without making it extremely difficult for the UK to meet its legally binding climate targets, their scientific researchers conclude.

And they emphasis the climate targets are not optional.

‘The climate we experience today is, on average, the least extreme climate that our children will ever know. Unless we exchange comforting narratives for meaningful action, we are on course to leave them, and future generations, a world of escalating climate disruption, deepening food and water insecurity, increasing displacement and growing conflict.

‘Despite frequent references to a “new normal”, there is nothing normal or stable about our trajectory. Every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels adds to global warming. Cutting emissions only slows the rate of warming; it does not stop it. Temperatures stabilise only when fossil fuel emissions reach zero.

‘Until then, climate impacts will continue to intensify’.

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When Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave her backing to the Heathrow expansion proposal in January last year, she argued it was necessary for economic growth, and that it was possible to achieve within the climate targets because sustainable aviation fuels were a “game changer”.

Graphic from Tyndall Centre Manchester’s website

According to the scientists who wrote the report, Heathrow Airport expansion risks for the climate change act, the two technologies relied upon to enable passenger growth or airport expansion to fit within carbon budgets are not even close to being on track to provide sufficient capacity within the required timeframe.

Research fellow Dr Lois Pennington said:

“Sustainable aviation fuels and carbon removals can contribute to limiting aviation emissions, but there is currently no evidence that these technologies can support the scale of aviation expansion envisaged by the Government.”

The report concludes:

‘SAF [Sustainable Aviation Fuels] and GGR [Greenhouse Gas Removals] may play an important role in decarbonising aviation in future years, but they are neither timely nor at the appropriate scale to avoid breaching CB7 [the UK’s Seventh Carbon Budget].

‘Current evidence shows slow and low SAF and GGR delivery. Proven scalability through successful UK commercial SAF and GGR projects should be a prerequisite to airport capacity expansion’.

Heathrow departure hall

Recent approvals of airport expansion at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and elsewhere already put us on course to break climate emissions targets

The researchers also say the UK needs to look at all airport traffic as a whole, instead of looking at projected traffic at individual airports in isolation.

Even before a third Heathrow runway is built, recent approvals of airport expansion at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and elsewhere mean that UK aviation is already projected to exceed its share of the Seventh Carbon Budget (2038-42) by between 21% and 50%, depending on how much SAF is produced.

Dr Pennington said:

“Every aviation scenario the UK Government has published overshoots the carbon budget Parliament has legislated, before a third runway at Heathrow is even taken into account.

“Our analysis shows that aviation cannot continue to grow if the sector is to make a proportionate contribution to meeting the UK’s carbon budgets”.

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research was founded in 2000 to conduct ‘cutting edge, interdisciplinary research, and provide a conduit between scientists and policymakers’.

With nearly 200 members ranging from PhD researchers to Professors, from the Universities of Manchester, East Anglia, Southampton and Newcastle, the Tyndall Centre represents a substantial body of the UK’s climate change expertise from across the scientific, engineering, social science and economic communities.

The report was written by Dr Lois Pennington, Dr Chris Jones, Professor Alice Larkin and Dr Diarmaid Clery, and commissioned and funded by Friends of the Earth.

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