Read part one if this article here.
Official documentation repeatedly suggests that expanding civil aviation, like other ‘strategic infrastructure’, justifies setting aside environmental damage created by development. The current government, with its Planning and Infrastructure Bill as an example, appears to disregard alleged environmental and planning constraints on development in general.
Since the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe, it seems this approach to both planning authority activities and national infrastructure creation has been highly successful and exceptionally destructive so far. Let’s consider the environmental implications of present airports as well as the threats presented by expansion.
Noise and night flights
Civil aviation cannot function without significant noise impacts upon communities in the day, and sometimes at night. Even restricting disruption to the daytime would not take into account about 8.7 million nightshift workers.
Alleged ‘need’ for express freight services to operate at night, and allowing flights at Heathrow to land from 4.30am both have a significant impact on the health of local communities. There is a need to severely restrict hours of flying as part of reducing overall flights.
So, for example, there should be no take offs or landings in the UK outside 8am-8pm other than for emergency services or defence-related activities. Each airport should have noise reduction policies and this should be part of local government responsibilities in cooperation with the Environment Agency.
Physical environmental implications of airports
The Government is well aware that aviation has a range of environmental impacts. Airports, like settlements, create surface transport emissions including nitrous oxides and carcinogenic particulate matter.
Airports generate waste and create both energy and water use; like road run off, airports have permitted discharges into both groundwater and watercourses. Given the land area airports can occupy, much benefit can be gained by the conversion of an airport to other uses. Housing in areas proximate to existing facilities, creating new parks and joining up biodiversity corridors, and creating new schools or hospitals where needed all seem worthwhile. Airports can be seen as brownfield sites of opportunity.
Air pollution and emissions expansion
If a forest twice the size of London would be required to cancel out the extra emissions from the expansion of Heathrow and Gatwick, then what would be required to do the same for all of the airports that wish to expand?
New runaways at Gatwick, Heathrow, and Luton airports could result in additional emissions of approximately 92 million tonnes of extra carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) by 2050.
To meet net zero targets, the UK would need to cut emissions further in other sectors of the economy or, somehow, remove an equivalent amount from the atmosphere. For example, offsetting these emissions would require planting more than 300,000 hectares of trees, and conserving them, within just a few years. This is equivalent to all the trees planted in the UK since 2000, many of which did not survive.
Turbulence in an airport expansion vision
Is it possible that increasing turbulence in an unchecked global climate emergency could create ‘stranded assets’ pressures on civil aviation? Turbulence is a recognised problem for civil aviation and it has many causes. Climate change is known to be adding to air turbulence. Some routes are more prone to turbulence than others. The scientific consensus emerging is that turbulence influencing aviation resulting from worsening climate change is going to increase.
Aviation climate targets
Does the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) believe expanding civil aviation can be compatible with achieving net zero? The CCC says that no airport should expand without ‘capacity management’ assessments.
But it also favours no net expansion of airports, something successive governments have ignored. The CCC’s concern about demand management might be addressed by increased Air Passenger Duty (APD). However, APD, first introduced in 1994, has been too low to stave off aviation expansion or the ‘boom’ in private jet use.
The Government is increasing APD by 50% for private jets but given the expanding aviation sector, APD still appears to be too low. Perhaps another approach to decreasing flights would be to stop costs related to flying being a permitted business expense?
Net zero aviation and the myth of ‘jet zero’
The Government’s ‘jet zero’ approach to aviation suggests net zero can be achieved in civil aviation by 2050. But growth of civil aviation without limits is not compatible with cutting greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from aircraft and associated surface transport.
A strategy for rapid aviation decarbonisation would require exceptional technological breakthroughs and the scaling up of such technologies by 2050. The idea of ‘jet zero’ has spawned enthusiasm by most airport operators for expansion of flights. The International Energy Agency has said decarbonisation for net zero will require cuts in aviation growth.
The private jet
Who actually benefits from flying in a private jet? About 1 in 10 flights in the UK are private jets, averaging three passengers apiece. The UK is the top destination for private jets in Europe, with most journeys under 500km – meaning rail options are generally possible. Banning private jets and their inevitable high pollution rates per passenger is an obvious climate, noise, and air pollution ‘gain’. It can also lead to conversion of airport sites with significant private jet traffic to other purposes.
Alternatives to airport expansions
Statutory rights for remote working and flexitime could help to decrease perceived need for flights. Improving rail options for faster travel should not be just about the costly failure story of HS2.
Other railway developments to encourage a switch from air to rail could include: re-opening disused rail lines; increasing the number of carriages in trains and passenger space; re-positioning tracks on some routes to allow faster speeds; selectively adding new underground rail lines serving congested areas, where it would be helpful in reducing traffic in urban settlements and in providing links between surface rail stations.
Airports for vertical-only use
Selected airports could convert part of their sites to electric helicopters or other vertical take-off and landing aircraft. The rest of the airport could be used for non-aviation purposes. This should only occur where police, air ambulance, and air-sea rescue helicopters are already (or are going to be) based, meaning in practice need assessment for such site usage should be conducted at a regional level.
Maintaining passenger and emergency service flights to island communities, unless tunnel or bridge options seem practical, will continue. Can this sort of conversion happen? Well, a shadow of what might occur is available:
“The first successful European flight of an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft [VTOL] took place in Oxfordshire… The prototype took off at Turweston in Buckinghamshire, and landed at Bicester Motion before returning. Bicester Motion is the home of a prototype ‘vertiport’.”
And electric helicopters already exist.
In the murky world of alternative fuels, a little light
It is possible some types of alternative fuels might power VTOL aircraft. Experimentation with sodium fuel cells is already underway and can provide more energy than a conventional battery of the same weight.
Sodium Ion batteries are already in production in China and are being sold to consumers. Since size matters in aviation, we should note Airbus is working on a superconducting, fuel cell-powered aircraft intended to carry up to 100 passengers.
Social justice is often excluded from discussions of aviation. In so far as flying is necessary for some people, ways of ensuring this is not just for the well-heeled are needed. But it remains necessary to cut aviation emissions radically by 2050 as alternative forms of flight are not going to be scaled up by that date.
The Government re-emphasised its climate goals in January 2025, including an 81% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2035. However, its plans for doing so do not include aviation, shipping, or farming.
Some aviation policy priorities
This section draws upon comments made to me by Professor John Whitelegg:
Aviation is heavily subsidised and the main task is full internalisation of external costs. This could include: no public subsidy of any kind to any airport; all costs associated with security, customs, and policing at airports to be fully funded by airports and airlines; full carbon pricing for all flights and tickets; zero carbon and zero air pollution plans monitored and delivered; and full noise reduction and measures to protect residents under flight paths.
A lower aviation future
A UK in which far more people holiday locally and nationally would be a very different place, requiring far fewer passenger flights. Economic and environmental benefits would be significant.
The potential alternative uses of the large areas occupied by airports must be considered. Rather than any airport expansion, this sort of conversion probably requires long-term, perhaps 25-year, conversion programmes for each airport site selected.
This would mean some airports cease to be airports altogether; some should have VTOL services only, occupying far less of their existing space; some would have trimmed services to cut all their environmental impacts – including surface road transport – whilst moves towards a renewable source, electricity-powered civil aviation sector took place.
As in other sectors, cutting aviation emissions is essential to achieving deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. At present, aviation – like shipping – stands out as a sector favoured for expansion as if the climate emergency did not exist.
Somebody, wake up the Government.
Author’s note: Thanks to Hazel Dawe and Professor John Whitelegg for their comments.
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