From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
From phys.org:
There is no credible scenario in which expansion at Heathrow can go ahead without blowing a hole in the UK’s legally binding climate targets, new modeling published today by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at The University of Manchester reveals.
The report, commissioned by the environmental justice organization Friends of the Earth, provides the first detailed analysis of whether Heathrow expansion is compatible with the UK’s legal carbon budgets.
Recent approvals of airport expansion at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and many other locations 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 sustainable aviation fuel materializes. That is before any Heathrow expansion takes place.
The analysis concludes that the two technologies relied on to allow passenger growth or airport expansion to fit within carbon budgets—sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and greenhouse gas removals (GGR)—are not even close to being on track for sufficient capacity within the required time frame.
The report concludes that Heathrow expansion cannot credibly meet the UK’s climate targets based on three key findings:
- Aviation emissions: The UK’s aviation sector will already exceed its share of the Seventh Carbon Budget by around 40%, even before Heathrow expansion is considered. The research highlights how even the government’s own modeling reaches a similar conclusion.
- Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF): Based on existing evidence, SAF would be unable to close the emissions gap. Even optimistic deployment of this technology would leave aviation above its carbon budget share. Previous studies have shown that current SAF production methods face major structural constraints or compete with agriculture for land and water, just as farmers have experienced what could be the worst harvest on record and are already warning about the impact of the climate crisis on food production.
- Greenhouse gas removals (GGRs): GGRs describe methods that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it long term, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. The report highlights that global GGR deployment is significantly off track and that no engineered removal plants are yet operating in the UK. Despite this, aviation emissions modeling heavily relies on potential future GGRs to offset additional emissions. Even before any airport expansion is taken into account, aviation is the biggest projected user of GGR capacity. On top of this, these scenarios all depend on SAF pulling its weight; if SAF fails to deliver, even more GGRs will have to be deployed. The report concludes that building capacity for more aviation demand before large-scale GGR facilities are operational is inconsistent with taking climate targets seriously.
- Non-CO₂ impacts are not accounted for: Aviation’s full warming effects are not captured within carbon budgets. Non-CO₂e impacts, including those from nitrogen oxides and contrails, account for around two-thirds of aviation’s climate warming and should be incorporated into future climate targets.
Full story here.
One would, of course, have expected to see these anti-Heathrow findings from the Tyndall Centre and Friends of the Earth.
But it does indicate, I fear, that there will be plenty of meat on the bone for legal challenges.
On the wider point, though, this report underlines the fact that aviation in its entirety is incompatible with Net Zero. Sustainable fuels were never going to be more than a sideshow, while carbon removals will remain just a pipedream.
It is worth recalling the Government sponsored UK FIRES report in 2019. It looked at the technological implications of achieving Net Zero:
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/download
Yep – you read that right – stop using planes!
By 2029, they insisted, all airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast would have to shut. These too would have to go before 2050:
Even the Tyndall Centre is scared to reveal this inevitable outcome of Net Zero.
