Wherever there’s an airport, you’ll usually find two things: an expansion plan, and a community group of campaigners fighting the expansion.
Expansions are controversial – airports argue the business case for longer runways, increased facilities and ever higher passenger numbers, citing the economic prosperity and local jobs brought about by increased capacity.
Counter-arguments have historically focussed on the noise and air pollution suffered by the local community, but are now increasingly turning towards the wider impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on climate change.
No joined up thinking
In 2019, the Climate Change Committee recommended that, in order to reach the UK’s legally-binding net zero goals, air passenger numbers should not rise by more than 25% by 2050. In 2023 the CCC repeated its call for there to be no net airport expansion in the UK. Airport expansion plans at that time added up to nearly 60% increased capacity.
This disparity made clear the issue concerning airport expansion decisions: they are taken in isolation, rather than as a whole. This creates problems when it comes to calculating how airport expansion fits into our remaining carbon budget; on their own, no airport expansion would tip us over the edge of net zero. Collectively, our budget is quickly spent.
For example, Heathrow’s third runway would increase existing capacity by almost 20%, taking up nearly the entire expansion budget, meaning that if Heathrow were to expand, none of the others could. Each political decision hinges on there being room in the carbon budget for that particular airport’s proposals. It’s easy to argue the case – as long as you overlook the fact that the same argument is being applied to all other expansion applications.
In reality, rather than one airport’s plans excluding another, it’s more likely that they encourage them. If a plan is approved, it makes it more difficult to refuse another, especially when arguments centre around regional competition and connectivity. Balancing the market is a strong driver of commercial decisions such as this. Ultimately, granting expansion at one airport opens up expansion to all.
Emissions from flights not included in expansion plans
Airports often point to the work they are doing to be ‘net zero’ in their operations. The trouble is that flights are not included in this. That bears repeating: the emissions from the flights themselves are not included in the emissions budget of an airport’s expansion plans.
The emissions from the flights themselves are not included in the emissions budget of an airport’s expansion plans.
Any talk of being ‘carbon neutral’ or achieving net zero refers to ground operations: things like the airport buildings, on-site vehicles, travel to the airport, and aircraft movement on site including taxiing. Encouraging train travel to an airport is all very well, but it’s a tiny proportion of the emissions of the flight itself.
Airport bosses will argue that domestic flights are included in the UK’s carbon budget, and international flights are covered by CORSIA (the aviation industry international strategy for reducing emissions, which relies mainly on offsetting), so there’s no need to include consideration of increased emissions from an increase in flights.
The danger is that the consumer sees a ‘carbon neutral’ airport and makes the natural assumption that the flights are part of that.
Even without this tricksy language, there’s no guarantee that ground operations will actually be carbon neutral. Airports are continually promising improvements but not delivering. Heathrow talks about introducing one-engine taxiing as a way to reduce emissions – a strategy that was first mentioned more than 10 years ago.
To illustrate just how much emissions from flights are at odds with emissions reduction targets, we can use the example of Leeds Bradford airport. Before the expansion was withdrawn in 2022, Leeds council supported the plans. That’s despite having declared a climate emergency in 2019, and set targets for emissions not to exceed 42 megatonnes of CO2 between 2018 and 2050.
At the same time, Leeds Bradford Airport planned to expand from 4m passengers to 7.1m by 2030 and 9m by 2050. By 2030, the climate impact of flights to and from LBA alone would be twice the target emissions for the whole of Leeds. Even if passenger numbers remained at 2019 levels, LBA flights would take up the entire carbon budget by 2050.
Reliance on Jet Zero
Many airports cite the government’s Jet Zero policy in their expansion plans as the method by which the emissions from the planes will be dealt with.
Jet Zero relies on three main things:
- SAF (sustainable aviation fuel)
- new technology and efficiency
- offsetting
Our analysis of why Jet Zero won’t be effective can be found here.
Airports argue that, because Jet Zero will deal with the emissions from the flights, they don’t have to consider them. But the government, and therefore airports, are not listening to the Committee on Climate Change which says that the Jet Zero strategy is not good enough: any policy to reduce flight emissions must include some sort of demand management, i.e. reducing or levelling off the number of passengers flying.
Impact on local communities and nature
Aircraft noise is a huge issue for local people. A study around Heathrow airport showed that people living under the flightpath were 10-20% more at risk of stroke and heart disease. The evidence suggests that cases of stress and anxiety are also more prevalent among those living near airports.
Expansion can put the local area under massive strain. One of the key arguments against Bristol airport expansion is that there is limited public transport to the airport, so increased flights would mean an increase in the number of people driving there, contributing to local congestion, noise and air pollution, as well as using green belt land for car parking.
At Liverpool John Lennon airport, expansion plans involve building into a stretch of the Oglet Shore area of the river Mersey. This impacts upon the biodiversity of the area as well as on the local residents’ ability to access a valuable green space.
The impacts upon nature extend beyond building works displacing biodiversity. Airports disrupt local bird and insect populations, through aircraft noise and runway lights confusing and disrupting flight paths, sleep rhythms, and mating calls. Airports are permitted to remove bird nests up to 10 miles from the runway in order to avoid bird strike. Bigger airports and increased operations result in a bigger impact on local biodiversity.
The economic argument
Expansion plans cite local jobs and the local economy benefitting from the project. While airport operations might well provide local employment, in most cases the businesses that operate out of the airport (and the airport itself) are not locally owned, so the profits are removed from the local area.
By their very nature, airports facilitate people leaving the country to spend their money elsewhere. Overall, more money is spent by Brits overseas than is spent by overseas visitors coming here. On balance, airports remove more money from the British economy than they bring.
A 2023 study by climate charity Possible and employment think tank Autonomy showed that if we moved to a green transport system, the number of jobs gained would far outnumber the jobs lost in aviation.
Local decisions overruled at government level
The frustrating nature of planning laws has been shown time and again in the case of airports up and down the country. In January 2020, Uttlesford councillors unanimously rejected the expansion of Stansted airport, citing the negative climate impact. A year later there was a public enquiry, prompted by the inevitable appeal from the airport’s owners, Manchester Airports Group (MAG). In its statement, the Planning Inspectorate said that the “limited degree of harm arising in respect of air quality and carbon emissions” was “far outweighed by the benefits of the proposal.”
The same thing happened later that year with Bristol airport, where the expansion was refused by North Somerset Council, but pushed through at the national level.
In 2023 the by-now-familiar story played out again at Liverpool John Lennon airport: the local council rejected the airport’s initial LDC (Lawful Development Certificate) application, but the application was granted by the government on appeal.
Injustice
Airport expansion illustrates the inequality of aviation, by which the benefits are felt by a few, but the harms felt by all.
Each year, only around half of the UK population gets on a plane. Globally, the imbalance is more stark: only around 5% of the world’s population flies in any given year. So flying is accessed by a small number, whereas all suffer the effects: the local community through increased noise and air pollution, and the global community through increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Ultimately, airports are businesses
and businesses have only one model: growth. The difficulty of living on a finite planet is that we can’t have exponential growth, and the progress of ‘green’ technology is much too slow for reducing emissions at anything like the rate that is needed.
The climate emergency is simply not compatible with further expansion of airports or passenger numbers. The only way forward is to reduce passenger numbers significantly, and quickly, as well as demand that government and industry wake up to the reality of the climate crisis and aviation’s role in it.
To find out more about the nationwide campaign to halt airport expansion, go to the No Airport Expansion website.
