London Airport expansion highlights danger of ‘false hope’ in Jet Zero strategy

This week, Britain’s new centre-left government approved an expansion of London City Airport that would enable the business hub to handle 2.5 million additional passengers a year.

Monday’s approval follows similar green lights for airport expansion given by the previous centre-right government – and runs counter to strong advice from Britain’s official climate change advisory body, as well as opposition from climate activists and east Londoners concerned about noise and carbon emissions.

The Climate Change Committee stated last June that there should be “no net expansion of airports across the UK” and that “no airport expansions should go ahead until a nationwide capacity management framework is in place”. A spokesperson told Climate Home that this remains the committee’s position.

But Labour ministers Angela Rayner and Louise Haigh agreed to the City of London expansion, saying in a statement that raising the cap from 6.5 million to 9 million passengers a year would bring more jobs and tourists to London and increase business productivity. They added that the expansion would not conflict with the government’s “Jet Zero Strategy”. – for cleaner air traffic – nor will it prevent the UK from meeting its 2050 net zero emissions target as the additional emissions would not be significant.

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Climate activists said the move highlighted the shortcomings of Britain’s airport planning policy and the Jet Zero strategy, which aims to cut aviation emissions through cleaner fuels, carbon offsets and carbon dioxide (CO2) removal machines while passenger numbers increase by around half between 2018 and 2050.

Other major London airports – including Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted – are also considering expansion or are applying for approval.

In choosing the City of London, ministers relied heavily on advice from two planning inspectors – Claire Searson and Johanna Ayres. The inspectors concluded that emissions from airport expansions “can be taken into account as part of the planned development to achieve net zero emissions by 2050” under the Jet Zero strategy and that therefore “our planning policy framework remains consistent with the UK’s climate commitments”.

The Jet Zero strategy was published by the last Conservative government in July 2022. Its aim is to achieve net zero emissions in the aviation sector by 2050 – a target that the government says is “hugely challenging”.

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Alethia Warrington, climate campaigner at the NGO Possible, told Climate Home that the UK was “forward-looking” compared to other countries with this target, but its forecasts for passenger growth were “incredibly dangerous”. Possible has challenged the strategy in court. Greenpeace campaigner Paul Morozzo said the strategy was based on “false hopes”.

The plan does not include any measures to limit the number of flights or the capacity of airports. Therefore, planning inspectors and ministers concluded that airport expansions would not conflict with the strategy.

Instead, the aim is to achieve almost half of the sector’s emissions reductions by buying carbon offsets. But many of these offsets – where the buyer pays someone else to reduce emissions on their behalf – have been proven not to deliver the emissions savings promised.

The Jet Zero strategy envisages achieving about a quarter of the required emissions reductions through improvements in fuel efficiency, a further quarter through “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) and a small part through zero-emission aircraft.

Many airlines are purchasing more fuel-efficient aircraft, thereby reducing their climate-damaging emissions. But the viability and sustainability of SAFs is being questioned by activists, regulators and even the airlines.

The only commercially available non-fossil fuel for aircraft is currently produced from biomass. Crops such as corn, soy, oil palms and even used cooking oil are converted into kerosene.

However, not nearly enough of it is produced to meet demand. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said in December: “There is not enough cooking oil in the world to power more than one day of air traffic.” For this reason, SAF is currently more than four times as expensive as conventional oil-based aviation fuel.

Biofuels also often compete with food production, worsening hunger and encouraging deforestation. The UK’s advertising watchdog recently ruled that Virgin Atlantic airline should not have told customers it was flying with “100% sustainable aviation fuel” because it gave the misleading impression that the fuel was completely environmentally friendly.

Andrew Symes is CEO of a company called OXCCU, which has just started producing tiny test quantities of SAF in a container next to Oxford Airport in England. Earlier this month, he told journalists visiting the site that biofuel-based SAFs alone would not be enough, so his company is developing a SAF that blends carbon dioxide and green hydrogen.

OXCCU CEO Andrew Symes holds up his company’s catalyst and SAF at the new test facility in Oxford (Photo: OXCCU)

However, Symes acknowledged that the fuel was “not perfect” because the CO2 would have to be bought by industry – and burning it would harm the planet. However, he said it still offered a “huge emissions saving” compared to conventional jet fuel and could be made carbon neutral by capturing the emitted CO2 from the atmosphere.

However, producing the hydrogen in this carbon-neutral way would require huge amounts of CO2 removal machinery, as well as solar panels and wind turbines to generate the renewable electricity needed to produce green hydrogen, he noted.

He predicted that the fuel would be used in small quantities in aircraft by the end of the decade and could be used on a larger scale from then on. But Possible’s Warrington disputed this claim.

“The idea that we can conjure up this gigantic renewable capacity to produce e-fuel so that a small group of wealthy frequent flyers never have to take the train again – that’s just not feasible,” she said. Warrington predicted that it would be “quite a few decades” before carbon-free flights were commonplace.

Even if all the emission reduction measures outlined in the UK’s ambitious Jet Zero Strategy scenario are successful, annual CO2 emissions are still expected to reach 19 million tonnes in 2050 – about half of today’s levels.

These remaining emissions are to be reduced by CO2 removal, but Warrington is skeptical. “There is no payment mechanism for it. It would be horrendously expensive. It would consume an enormous amount of resources,” she says. “It’s just not feasible.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; Editing by Megan Rowling)