British lawmakers are pushing to block expansion of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, arguing that additional flights are illegal – pushing Britain past limits on carbon emissions.
The government recently approved a third runway at Heathrow and a second at Gatwick, and backed expansions at other airports.
It and the aviation industry had argued that expanding the airports were vital for the UK’s economic growth and that sustainable aviation fuel, carbon offsetting, and more efficient planes would keep emissions in check.
However, the committee warns that airport expansion would directly increase greenhouse gas emissions from additional flights, ground operations, and surface transport.
Another runway at Heathrow supports more flights, but does that mean more flights total in the world, and greater emissions?
- It may mean smaller but newer planes which are more fuel efficient rather than cramming more passengers into larger but older jets.
- And more flights supports more connections, which may mean planes have a higher load factor – transporting passengers more efficiently (fewer emissions per passenger) and outcompeting other less efficient hubs.
- More flights at Heathrow may mean more London flights instead of Paris flights, growth at one major European hub can trade off against another.
- Heathrow growth from an additional runway is also de minimis relative to world growth (or even China or India annual growth). And all of commercial aviation is about 2% of world emissions.
U.K. emissions are falling and are 43% below 1990 levels. The biggest change, of course, is the near-elimination of coal power. Planes, too, are far less emitting.
The U.K. has been experiencing economic stagnation. Growth last year was less than 1%, in the second quarter of this year it rose just 0.3% quarter-on-quarter. The UK is lagging peers as well. Much of support for Brexit was that they were supposed to break from the economic shackles that proponents blamed on the E.U. but that has not happened. Clearly!
If they actually cared about aviation emissions, though, they’d start with European aviation is more carbon-intensive than U.S. aviation and by a lot, because of air traffic control there that makes planes fly longer, less direct routes and burn more fuel.
Europe has three times the en-route centers compared to the U.S. serving fewer daily flights. Flights tend to zig zag through convoluted airspace in order to hand off planes to unnecessary controllers in order to portect their jobs. The environmental concern over adding a Heathrow runway is not serious.